


Never for the Dragon

by ladyshadowdrake



Category: Marvel, Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Body Horror, Captivity, Character Study, Friends to Lovers, Jan is my favorite, M/M, PTSD, Rhodey and Tony being bros, So very much, ending is a little more sweet than bitter, friends that snark together stay together, no hank, post-captivity recovery, voluntary medical experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 20:00:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 89,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7120420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyshadowdrake/pseuds/ladyshadowdrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On what should be a routine mission to disable an abandoned Hydra base, Steve is captured by persons unknown. Getting him back should have been the hard part, but that’s just the beginning of a new danger facing the planet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_sparrows_fall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sparrows_fall/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Art for 'Never for the Dragon'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7120576) by [a_sparrows_fall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sparrows_fall/pseuds/a_sparrows_fall). 



> This is for the 2016 Cap-Iron Man Reverse Big Bang inspired by a magnificent art piece by a_sparrows_fall. I was so incredibly happy to this get this art, and I can only hope I did it justice!
> 
> The art WILL spoil the entire story, so tread carefully!
> 
> There are quite a few potential warnings/triggers that I wasn't sure how to incorporate in the tags without spoiling. In light of this, I have included an end note with more details that will also spoil the story a lot.
> 
> SO MANY thank you's to my lovely betas Synteis, Flange5, and Fjuri! You three keep me sane!

Blinding light, so white it turned pink on the edges, black in the center. It tasted like copper, soil, salt. He breathed in _coppersoilsalt_ and felt it rattle in his throat, ricochet in his lungs. He knew he had a body – of course he did – but it felt. Wrong. Too… long, too. Jagged. Sensitive. He tried to move and didn’t move the way he wanted. Bright points of pain marching down his limbs, throbbing pressure on his ankles, wrists – but they were… too far away from his chest?

Chittering noises rolled down his spine, words that were just out of reach. He managed to get his eyelids to work. Red. White. Red. White. Red. His throat was. Wrong. He tried to speak. A thin, shuddering noise broke on the light. White. Red. He turned his head, and the light fractured. His stomach twisted up under his ribs and he felt rough pressure turning him on his side so he didn’t choke on the fire that burned up through his throat.

Frigid water splashed over him. He couldn’t turn to escape it. It left him shivering, his skin aching.

Black.

He was shaking and couldn’t figure out why. The light was gone. The blackness was better. Almost. And then it wasn’t. He tried to speak again. He felt his jaw moving, but strangely. A vibration in his throat, but no sound. He tried again. And again.  

~*~

“Who _are_ these guys?” Clint asked, ducking behind Tony. Tony turned to face the oncoming bullets, making himself a bigger target and bringing his forearms up to protect his faceplate. Clint leaned around him and fired an exploding arrow down the hall – it hit the wall and sent chunks of concrete and dust into the mob following them. Tony vented his smokescreen, and led Clint back down the hall to cover. It should have been a routine run on an abandoned Hydra base to disable automatic defenses and pull what information they could out of the database while Sam, Jan, Thor, and Rhodey were in Wakanda on a diplomatic mission. Too bad someone else had gotten there first.

The Hydra safehouse was only a house in the loosest definition of the word. It was a trailer park on the topside with a maze of tunnels sprawling out for miles underneath and burrowing at least nine stories into the earth. They’d made it through eight floors of empty, echoing corridors and nothing useful, slacking off and not paying enough attention, when Clint kicked open another door and startled a hornet’s nest of unexpected scavengers.

“No idea, but I want to know who’s supplying their tech,” Tony answered. He went around the corner backwards, keeping himself in between Clint and the trigger happy assholes they’d interrupted. “I know fashionably late is a thing, but are you guys planning on getting here any time soon?” Tony asked. “It’s just that I’m stuck eating all these crab puffs on my own and I’m kind of getting full.”

“I’ll be there two minutes, Iron Man,” Steve answered. “Leave me a few of those little tomato basil things.”

“I’ll leave you exactly three for exactly the next two minutes,” Tony said, “But after that, I’m giving them to Clint.”

“And you know how I love those little tomato basil things.” Clint rapped his knuckles on the side of Tony’s helmet. “Give me a boost up into this vent. I’m going to see if I can get behind them.”

Tony heard footsteps coming down the hall and turned quickly. He dropped to one knee and Clint wasted no time climbing up to Tony’s bent knee, and then his shoulder. Tony stood, boosting him up, and Clint disappeared into the vent seconds before the mystery figures burst around the corner. Tony fired a pair of repulsor blasts at the first one out of the smoke. The strange blue shield that had Jarvis baffled was briefly visible under the force of the shots. The surrounding smoke glowed cerulean like a localized lightning storm, and Tony took what felt like two bulldozers to the chest.

“ _Sir, the integrity of the chestplate has dropped to 27%. Please do refrain from taking any more shots to the chest,”_ Jarvis said just as Tony took another to the body. “ _13%_ ,” he amended dryly. Tony punched the offender in the face and fired his boot jets to get himself out of range of any more shots. According to his infrared, Clint was already around the corner and beyond Tony’s ability to protect him. The best he could do was keep their attention on him and away from the ceiling.

“On your six, Iron Man,” Steve warned just before Tony’s proximity alarm went off, targeting sensors immediately homing in on him. Jarvis identified him and cancelled the targets before Tony could even take in a breath. “Any ideas who we’re dealing with?”

“Haven’t come up with anything since the last time you asked,” Tony replied. He charged both repulsors, for all the good it would do him. “But they’re using high caliber armor piercing rounds, and they’ve got some kind of energy based personal shield that I can’t get around. Yet.”

Steve took in a breath to respond but Tony’s proximity alarms went off again and he fired over whatever Steve had meant to say. It didn’t cause any damage, but the light of the repulsor blast made the guy hesitate just long enough for Steve nail him in the chest with the shield. The blue light of the man’s shield flared close to his body, but he still stumbled back. So the forceshields were most effective against fast-moving projectiles and energy. Good to know. Steve recovered his shield and ducked down without Tony needing to say a word. He swung his leg wide over Steve’s head, firing his maneuvering jets to augment what the servos already did for him. He hit one of the black-clad men solidly in the chest. Tony felt the shield pushing back on him and could see the ripples of force spreading out over the whole of the shield’s surface, displacing the momentum. The impact would have broken the man’s sternum if the baffling shield hadn’t flared up to protect him.

It still knocked the man on his ass with a muffled grunt. Good.

Allowing the momentum to spin him around, Tony got out of Steve’s way long enough for him to send the shield ricocheting off the walls, bouncing around the crush of black-clad figures like a pinball. Tony laughed – they were falling into each other, knocking each other over, tripping on their fallen comrades, and shouting incoherently while they tried to get through the bottleneck. All twenty of them had followed him and Clint out of the room and the halls were wide – but not that wide.

“Save some of the fun for me,” Clint pouted.

“Negative, Hawkeye,” Steve responded, deadpan, “You ate all of my tomato basil things.”

“Knew that was coming back to haunt me,” Clint muttered. There was a clatter through the coms and then a vent popped open down the hall and Clint spilled out of it up to the waist. Hanging upside-down, he started firing arrows into the mob, creating further confusion and panic, though the arrows themselves never sank into anything solid. “Really starting to piss me off.”

“Tell me about it.” Tony was using the cover of the chaos to analyze the shields and was coming up with nothing useful at all. “C’mon, Jarvis, we’re better than this.”

“There is insufficient data to make a solid hypothesis as to how these shields work, sir,” Jarvis answered. He was trying to sound like his normal, unconcerned self, but Tony could hear the irritation and embarrassment underneath his smooth accent. A grin stretched across Tony’s face – for a moment he sounded so much like the Jarvis he’d grown up with that he expected a wooden spoon to come flying out of the air any moment.

“Heads up, you’ve got company coming your way,” Natasha warned five seconds before his proximity alarms went wild.

“Pull back, Clint!” Tony snapped. It was a testament to how far they’d come as a team that Clint didn’t even hesitate long enough to shoot another arrow. In the blink of an eye, he was gone, the vent sealed up behind him. Tony snagged Steve by his combat harness and gave him a tug. He caught his shield on the rebound, and stepped one foot onto Tony’s left boot. With a twist and a blast from the jets, Tony threw them backwards and around the corner. He was peripherally aware of Steve’s arm curling around his waist, but his attention was on the alarms that had his HUD lit up like a video game UI.

“Where they hell did they all come from?” he muttered, speaking mostly to himself, watching as the red dots converged on them. The bulk of them were still headed for his and Steve’s last know position, but a few had peeled off to chase them down the halls. Trusting Steve to hold on, Tony adjusted himself into a more controllable flight position, and kicked up the speed. Underneath him, Steve was whooping like a kid on a roller coaster, and that was great, they could explore that more later, but it wouldn’t do them much good in a few minutes if they didn’t beat the mob to the elevator shaft.

“Hawkeye, what’s your status?” Steve asked, calming down his shouting for a second.

“Think I’m in the clear,” Clint whispered, “They’re passing right under me.”

“Wouldn’t put it past them to have infrared. Get out of there,” Tony cut in. He could hear the soft shushing of Clint crawling through the duct and knew he probably hadn’t needed to say anything, but he felt better with the order out in the air. Clint didn’t even bother to acknowledge him.

“Widow?” Steve asked.

“Second floor, covering the elevator shaft. They shake my bite off like it’s not even there,” she added. Just like Jarvis, she was trying to sound unconcerned. Just like Jarvis, Tony could hear the snarl of indignation under her words.

“Can you see where they’re coming from?”

“They’ve joined the party from the topside,” she reported. “And they’re still coming – mostly they’re heading for the stairs, but I can only knock so many of them down the shaft, so you better hurry your asses up.”

“I’ve hit the elevator,” Clint broke in. The dull banging sounds of the archer turning in the duct filtered through the comms, followed by the _thunk_ of his boots hitting the industrial carpet. “I’ll be up to you in three as long as I don’t have company.”

“Hold,” Natasha ordered. The comm went silent for a moment, and then there was scuffle. They heard a pair of screams first through Natasha’s comm, and then through Clint’s. “Now go. And don’t tell me you can’t climb five floors of perfectly good elevator cable in less than three minutes,” she added.

“I’ve been crawling through vents all day,” Clint complained, but Tony heard the fast _shushushushu_ of him climbing up the metal cable.

“As soon as you catch up to Widow’s position, the two of you get topside and get the jet warmed up,” Steve said, shifting his weight to hook his legs more securely around Tony’s waist, and wasn’t that a lovely thing? Tony had to keep his arms tucked tight to his sides to maneuver in the close corridors, so he couldn’t take the perfectly reasonable excuse to put an arm around Steve’s shoulders, but maybe next time.

“Copy,” Clint and Natasha replied together, Clint breathless with exertion.

Tony turned them toward the elevator shaft and snarled out a heated curse as the increasing tide of red dots closed them off again. He banked sharply left, but Steve’s weight – even with as compact as he’d made himself – threw him off balance and they bounced into right hand wall, scraped Steve’s shield on the ceiling, and then wove drunkenly down the corridor.

“Falling asleep behind the wheel, Shellhead?” Steve joked.

“Just sending a few texts, doing my makeup, that kind of thing.”

“Didn’t we just do a PSA commercial about that?”

“Yeah, well, old habits - _damnit!_ ” Tony exploded as they were cut off again. In another two seconds, a big group of their pursuers would have line of sight to open fire, and they were a pair of lame ducks on still water. “Screw it, we’re going up,” Tony announced. He pulled up sharply, aimed his repulsors at the ceiling and opened up full blast.

Chunks of cement, superheated rebar, and foam ceiling panels crashed down to the floor. Clinging to him like a monkey, Steve shifted just enough to bring the shield up. Tony turned to protect him from the worst of the debris, and felt three sharp cracks between his shoulders that knocked the air out of his lungs. A tiny display of his armor lit up on the HUD, the back panel flashing red. He needed to restrict Jarvis’ video game access. The other group came barreling around the corner and Steve caught two shots on the shield. A stray bullet sent a spray of concrete flying up at them. He heard Steve’s grunt of pain and twisted again.

Struggling to suck in air, Tony fired his thrusters and sent them up through two floors.  His shot hadn’t quite made it through the third ceiling, forcing him to pull up sharply. He cut power, dropping hard to the floor, legs dangling through the hole in the floor. Steve rolled free just in time, hitting the wall shield-first and bouncing back to land on his stomach. He pushed himself up right away, grabbed Tony under his knees and spun him away from the opening moments before it filed with fire. Holding the shield up, Steve curled over Tony as more chunks of the ceiling rained down.

“I’m in a suit of armor, stupid,” Tony rasped out, snaking an arm around Steve’s waist and rolling to put himself between Steve and the falling debris.

“You have heat signatures converging on your location, sir,” Jarvis informed him calmly. “May I suggest you make a hasty exit?”

As much as he would like to, he couldn’t blast them up through six more floors of poured concrete and a trailer park. “Running a little low on power, Cap. I’ve got enough to get us up through maybe one more floor and I’d like to save that until we only _have_ one more floor. If we can make it to the elevator, I can fly us up – breaking through the floor of the elevator shouldn’t be a problem.”

Steve nodded and pushed Tony off of him. He rolled his feet, grabbed Tony under his arms and hauled him up. They staggered together to the end of the hall, the elevator thankfully unobstructed, but the men on their tails were clambering up through the holes Tony had left them, and the elevator would be a kill box.  

 “This is a bad idea,” Steve observed, taking one side of the elevator door and yanking back until Tony could get the gauntlets jammed into the opening.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. They shared a grin. “It’s gonna be fun.”

The first of their attackers made it up through the hole in the floor and Steve flung himself into the elevator shaft to avoid the shots. Tony followed, catching him by his harness as he scrabbled for purchase on the shaft wall. Steve pulled himself up enough to be out of danger of the boot jets and Tony got a good grip on him as he rocketed up.

A burst of fire at the fourth floor drove them back down and Tony cussed. He stabilized them into a wobbly hover, pressing up against the near wall to make it hard for their attacker’s to aim. The first time a gun muzzle appeared in the opening, he shoot a pair of repulsor blasts directly upward to discourage them from sticking their heads out. Their shields must have either been untrusted technology, or they weren’t perfect, because they didn’t stick their heads out again.

“You two might want to find some cover,” Natasha broke in. “You’re about to have some very green company. Do I need to mention how unhappy he is at the moment?”

Steve groaned, but Tony laughed. Above them, the building shook, dust drifting down through the shaft, and the fire abruptly ceased. Faintly, Tony heard the Hulk bellowing. As one, they glanced down, and then up. A body flew through the second floor elevator door, smashed into the wall with a wet _splat_ , and fell past them, limp as a ragdoll.

“Down,” Steve and Tony said simultaneously, and Tony couldn’t help a high pitched giggle as he added, “ _She chose down_.”

“Not the best time for Labyrinth quotes,” Steve said. Tony had turned so his back would be to the elevator openings and Steve wrapped his arms around Tony’s chest, shield held up to protect the vulnerable place between his shoulders. They took a belated spray of bullets going past the sixth floor, but most of the mob seemed occupied trying to figure out where the Jurassic Park sound effects were coming from.

“Clear out of the elevator shaft,” Clint ordered as they hit the bottom floor. There was a messy pile of bodies littering the floor that Tony didn’t examine too closely. “I’m going to make you a new sunroof.”

“Copy,” Steve said, already hammering at the last door with his shield. The door was reinforced steel, thick bands of it running across, and no seam that Steve could get the shield in for leverage. “Not getting it,” Steve hissed, casting a glance upwards. Tony was already reaching out to him – he would take a dozen armed assholes over the Hulk any day of the week. He fired his jets to get off the floor and held his arms open.

“We’re taking fire up here, Cap, you need to clear out.” Natasha was calm and collected, but Tony could hear the alarmed _beepbeepbeep_ of the quinjet’s damage warning.

“Light it up, Clint,” Steve ordered, hoping up into Tony’s arms, legs curled up, shield held out, trusting Tony to catch him.

Tony twisted as he fired the jets, angling for the eighth floor elevator door. It was open, and they were predictably met by a spatter of bullets, but their attackers weren’t prepared for Steve to leap out of Tony’s arms and land among them like a wrecking ball with legs. The quinjet’s twin M134 machine guns opened up on the elevator shaft, filling it with the roar of gunfire and the screech of metal on metal as the elevator car crashed into the shaft floor. Steve bounced between the walls, knocking into black clad figures and flinging them around like toys. Tony decided to save his repulsor power and waded into the mix, kicking and wrenching weapons away, letting Steve use him as a springboard when needed, and trying to protect his vulnerable chest and back plates.

There were just so damn many of them, all of them pushing and shoving like the very worst tempered mosh pit Tony had ever encountered. He tried to keep track of how many of them there were, but their black-tinted face masks made it impossible. They had been separated by the crush of bodies; Steve was trying to fight his way back toward Tony and the elevator shaft, but the push and pull of the fight was dragging him further and further down the hallway. The men had stopped trying to shoot in the close quarters and were using their rifles as clubs. Tony pushed back, but there were too many of them, and Steve was nearly invisible in the deepening shadows as the overhead lights flickered and buzzed.

Above them, the Hulk screamed and the ceiling shuddered. He was smashing his way through the floors. Another few seconds and he would be right on top of them.

“Steve!” he called, pushing hard on the hands trying to get a grip on him. He had a sudden feeling that they weren’t trying to kill him anymore, they were just trying to overpower him, trying to _herd_ him. It made his shoulders bunch up and his chest tighten. “Steve! We need to _go!_ ”

There was no response. Before Tony could shout again, the ceiling broke open and twelve hundred pounds of very angry green rage monster dropped down into the hall. The Hulk started thrashing and pounding immediately, the screams of the trapped men only barely audible over his bellowing. Seeing the men who were trying to trap his good buddy Iron Man, the Hulk shrieked and started making grabby fists that weren’t really good at grabbing things smaller than city buses. Tony was flung into the elevator shaft, hit the wall with a ringing _clang_ , and landed among the twisted remains of the elevator car. His HUD flickered and for several seconds he could only lay there and breathe, his ears ringing.

“Steve,” he croaked, pushing himself up. He could feel the back plate shifting where it shouldn’t. It had broken between his shoulder blades, and his sensors were going wild with the damage to the circuitry. He tried to move, but the servos weren’t doing their job and he couldn’t shift the weight of the suit without leverage. “Jarvis, do a bypass and get me power!” he snapped.

“I am doing my best, sir,” Jarvis said, his voice jittery and faint.

“Cap! Steve, goddamnit, say something!”

“Cap’s comm is dark, Iron Man. Must have malfunctioned or fallen out. I’m rappelling down now,” Clint said.

“No,” Tony said sharply. “No, there’s too many assholes with too many guns down here, and the Hulk is having a very bad day.” He felt the weight lighten around his hips and pushed himself up. He ignored Clint’s few choice words in response to his order.

“The boot jets are currently inoperable, sir,” Jarvis warned him and Tony cussed. He slogged through the shattered, twisted pieces of metal, and jumped for the elevator door, just barely catching the edge. He flicked himself off the comm channel as he struggled and kicked and shouted his way back onto the eighth floor. There was a mess of bodies layering the floor, and the walls were buckled ominously outward, like they were struggling to hold the weight of the ceiling. Considering the gaping hole in the ceiling that extended several floors up, Tony wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing was about to collapse.

“– Man, you better fucking give me a status update,” Clint was shouting when Tony clicked himself back into the channel after a second to regain his breath. “I’m going down, Nat, and that asshole better not be dead.”

“The building is not going to stand up much longer,” Tony gasped over him, ignoring the little voice in his head that said _Steve’s the one who better not be dead_. “We need to find Cap, get Hulk a lullaby, and get the hell out of here.”

“The Hulk is up topside,” Natasha reported tightly, and Tony could tell that it wasn’t the first time she’d said it. Ok, so he hadn’t had time to finesse just the audio off, sue him. They probably would have appreciated listening him to fight his way onto the floor. “There was another entrance. A van went flying out of it two minutes ago, I’m in pursuit. So is our green friend. Clint is on the ground.”

“Negative,” Clint interrupted, “Clint is back in the freaking elevator shaft. _Again_. I am so done with this goddamned elevator shaft.”

“Jarvis, record for posterity – the day Clint Barton said he was done with shafts,” Tony breathed out weakly. His back seized up when he tried to take a deep breath and he subsided, breathing shallowly.

“Done, Sir. Shall I add it to the blackmail file?” Jarvis responded over the _whrrrrrrrr_ of Clint sliding down a cord.

Clint laughed. “You know I don’t have enough shame to be blackmailed, Jarvis.”

“Hope springs eternal, Mr. Barton,” Jarvis drawled.

Tony bit down on the urge to tell Clint to climb back up. He needed help finding Steve in all this mess before the building came down, and Clint had just as much right to search for their missing teammate as Tony did. If Steve were there, he would have sent them both back up to safer ground. Well, Steve wasn’t there. Tony was flying solo on the whole team leader routine.

Clint swung in through the elevator door. He dropped to the floor and unclipped from his rappelling gear.

“Shit,” he observed. Tony was pulling bodies up to see if Steve was underneath them. Clint moved past him, shoving bodies away and directing his gun light down the dark hallway. The building groaned and shifted ominously around them. Tony caught up to him – he could feel the weight of the suit sitting heavier around his shoulders, the joints grinding as he picked up each foot, and something was digging into the side of neck. He was going to have to be cut out of it.

“Get out of there, boys,” Natasha ordered. “Good news: Cap’s in the van. Bad news: the Hulk is getting pretty damn close to inhabited territory.”

“Copy,” Clint returned. Tony didn’t quite have the breath to say anything. “Come on,” Clint said to Tony, “We’ll have better luck finding that second exit than trying to get your dented ass up the shaft again.”

“You and your shaft fixation,” Tony huffed.

“You gonna talk to me about fixations, Stark?” Clint challenged.

“We can have a very lengthy talk about fixations whenever you’re up to it, birdbrain.” Tony stumbled and leaned a shoulder into the wall. The crack in the backplate had shifted and the edges were pressed against his spine.

Clint slid in against him, looping one arm around his waist. He grunted as he pulled Tony away from the wall. “Just schedule it for the next time someone knocks me unconscious.”

They moved as quickly as Tony could manage in the damaged suit while Natasha did her best to herd the Hulk away from civilization. The path to the second exit wasn’t difficult to find – with the Hulk on their tails, the scavengers hadn’t bothered to try for stealth, leaving doors open where they weren’t decimated by the Hulk’s passage. One wall at the end of a hall was pulled back to reveal a tunnel sloping upward. Tony was panting by the time they made it up the steep ramp to the open rolling door. He turned around when they made it to the open air – they were almost a quarter mile from the trailer park, and it was looking decidedly less park and more sinkhole as the seconds passed.

“Coming in hot with the Hulk in tow,” Natasha said. It was probably a good thing that all of Tony’s breath had gone to climbing, because it had been on the tip of his tongue to tell her to stay on the van. Of course they couldn’t stay on the van, not with the Hulk in a full fit and ready to tear up anything he could get his meaty hands on.

“You still awake in there, Tinhead?”

“Just catching up on a little light reading,” Tony said. He locked the knee and hip joints so he would stay upright. His HUD was a mess of flickering lines, the little Iron Man figure off the left corner now entirely red and flashing faintly in accusation. Great use of power, Jarvis.

“I’m going to try to talk our buddy down. You keep watch,” Clint said. He meant that Tony was basically useless and to stay out of the way, but Tony put himself out in the open anyway. For whatever unfathomable reason, the Hulk seemed to like him, and the faster they could get him back into a Banner-sized package, the sooner they could get after Steve.

“What kind of dumbshits take Captain America hostage, anyway?” he asked.

“The kind that failed villain school?” Clint suggested. He might have said more, but the Hulk crashed through the modest stand of trees nearly on top of him, and he didn’t look like he was ready to take a nap. Well, that was just fantastic.

Hell, Steve would probably break out on his own, and have his captors tied-up on the side of the road by the time they got the Hulk to calm down.


	2. Two

Chapter Two

“They’ve had him for _nine weeks,_ ” Tony hissed. “Nine weeks. How sure are we about this?”

Natasha gave him a level look. She was hard at the edges, chipped away to a cutting edge. If the last nine weeks had been hell on them, it had been worse for every shady organization she could get her hands on. Clint, Nat, and Sam had been out of the country for most of it, and Tony would have said that he didn’t envy the people their leads had taken them to, but he couldn’t muster up even an ounce of sympathy given the circumstances. They’d all been running themselves to the ground looking for any sign of Steve, but even with Jarvis turned loose on an unsuspecting and unprepared virtual underworld, they’d gotten precious little for their efforts. Sure, they’d dismantled a few crime syndicates and Tony’s lawyers were working overtime blocking extradition orders, but signs of Steve had been few and far between.

“As sure as we were the last time,” Natasha said. She barely opened her lips to speak, the words coming out flat and sharp as daggers.

Tony’s jaw tightened. He set a hand on the concrete wall and tried not to be angry at her. It wasn’t her fault that he’d built up his image of her into an unassailable fortress of secrets and superspy ninja skills, where anything she didn’t know was only something she hadn’t wanted to know. It wasn’t her fault that Tony had tested himself against the world’s biggest and baddest bad guys and failed so miserably. It had always been a kind of comfort to him that anything he couldn’t find out with a computer, Nat could figure out with a smile and stiletto. He hadn’t realized how much he relied on that certainty, or how much pressure he put on her, until she’d come back empty-handed time and time again.

It was _his_ fault that he’d built his own image up to an unassailable tower of technological marvel, where the only things he couldn’t access where things he hadn’t wanted to access. He’d had his self-image shattered before, had realized more than once that he hadn’t been on the side of the angels, hadn’t been good enough, strong enough, fast enough. He’d never woken up to realize that he hadn’t been _smart_ enough, that there was something he couldn’t get his technological fingers into. First time for everything.

“We’re in place up here,” Jan said into the comms. Her voice had the slightly-too-fast, slightly-too-high quality that it did when she shrank. Tony hadn’t been able to fix the differential yet, more failure. “Thanks for the lift, big guy.”

“My pleasure, small lady warrior,” Thor rumbled. “Are you close enough?”

“I’ll fly from here,” she said brightly. “Burn off some of those calories from lunch.”

Tony shifted his weight restlessly, leaning against the boulder to compensate for the weight of the EMP cannon he’d developed to combat the energy shields. It was slung over his shoulders like an oversized backpack, the long nose of the cannon pointed to the sky while it wasn’t in use. He brought up the building schematics and followed Jan’s path as she dove into an air vent. She had a tiny camera strapped to her chest with a wide-angle lens, but it was an imperfect solution at best, and the way she moved in flight made the image jump and shudder. She took the ventilation shaft down fourteen stories, and then through a maze of twisting tunnels and vents, backtracking when she ended up once in a storage shed, and twice in what looked like sleeping quarters. The similarity of the structure to the Hydra base under the trailer park made for a few possibilities, none of them any good: the trailer park base had never been a Hydra base, Hydra had moved in when the original owners appeared to have abandoned it, or this _was_ Hydra and they were even bigger and more deeply entrenched than anyone had guessed. Tony tried not to think about it too hard, but he couldn’t help running the possibilities, tangents, consequences as he examined the blueprints. The best they could hope for was that the plans hadn’t changed from the first blueprints to construction. The rest they would have to deal with later.

“I think I’m at the right floor,” Jan reported. “Jeeze, it’s cold in here. I don’t know how you do this all day, Barton.”

“I like the cold.”

“We couldn’t tell from all those shirts you wear that have sleeves,” she retorted sarcastically. She flew into a corridor and stopped to orient herself against a wall. She made an exaggerated gagging sound. “Oh, honey, bad color choices. Baby puke green is never good for anything. Yuck. When will they learn?”

Tony couldn’t help a twitch of a smile while he waited for Steve to give out a weary sigh and make an attempt at _cut the chatter_. He almost said it himself when Steve didn’t, but no. No, he wasn’t going to go down that route. Being team mom more-or-less on his own was bad enough without trying to fill dad’s shoes too. He let the breath out, and felt Nat shift next to him. She was wrapped up in the best thermal gear, her hair hidden under a tight fitting cap, her face even more pale than usual against the dark gray fabric. On the other side of the facility, Clint and Sam waited. Rhodey was somewhere in the trees with Bruce, and hopefully they weren’t going to need a repeat performance of the Hulk smashing down through the underground facility like a mobile stick of TNT, but it paid to have him there.

“Okay, I think this is the control room,” Jan’s tiny voice said. “Give me a second to find the right buttons… or levers. Why’s it always levers? I only weigh a tenth of a gram,” she grumbled.

“Is the control room empty?” Rhodey asked.

“No,” she answered, turning so her wide-angle camera could catch the guard sitting in front of the monitors. “There’s a really gross looking guy with a flattop like he’s been down here since 1987.” Before Tony could open his mouth to make a suggestion, the camera jostled as the angle changed, and then stabilized. “And now he’s asleep. I’m really getting good at that. Okay. You guy’s ready?”

Next to him, Natasha drew her rifle into her shoulder, welded her cheek to the rest, and let her knees go loose. Tony could have charged his repulsors for effect, but that would just make noise and waste power, so he crouched down as various _ready, go_ ’s echoed around the comms. The door _boomed_ in the chilly silence and then cracked open and started to rise.

“Alright – you guys are on your own. I’m going to go look for Steve. Good luck!” Jan called, her voice going from full to tinny mid-word.

Natasha bent at the waist to slip under the lifting door, her chest dropping below the line of her knees, and she looked graceful and fluid while she was at it. Tony wasn’t sure he could have bent that way even he wasn’t wearing over two hundred pounds of metal and gear. He dropped to hands and knees and crawled, much less gracefully, through the opening as soon as he could fit. Alarms were blaring inside, lights running along the ceiling flicking red.

Tony climbed clumsily to his feet as the first clatter of boots came down the hall. The HUD lit up with a nauseatingly familiar map of approaching red dots, and he drew one hand over his shoulder, pulling the new cannon forward. He hadn’t even been able to slap a paint job on it before Natasha had called him out of the workshop for the trip north. It was poorly weighted and he had to lean to the right to balance it.

Three men, chatting and obviously irritated that they’d drawn the short straw for the ‘check the door alarm’ duty, rounded the corner with their weapons lazily slung over their shoulders, forearms resting negligently on them. Their black masks were lifted and resting on the top of their heads. The one in the lead had half an instant to give Tony and Nat a very startled look before Tony opened up with the cannon. It was less noise than pressure, a wave of it like thunder, and it pushed Tony backward two scraping feet. The men were bowled over by it, but Tony was more pleased by the sudden flash of blue light that seemed to flicker and sputter. Nat squeezed off a half second burst of chattering fire, and there were no blue shields to send the bullets ricocheting.

“Ha!” Tony crowed, as two of the three scrambled to their feet and took off around the corner. The last stayed on his back, stunned, bleeding from half a dozen bullet wounds. “Cannon works,” he added, in case Clint and Sam had missed it.

“Fuck yeah it does,” Clint whooped back.

“If you boys are done playing with your toys, maybe we could find our missing teammate?” Natasha suggested, ghosting past Tony to kick the bleeding man’s gun away. He just stared up at her, confused, and made no sound. Tony followed her around the corner, the cannon already recharging on his back. He needed to make it more streamlined, improve its efficiency, decrease charging time, but for a slapped-together job, it would do. They’d only managed to salvage one shield device before the trailer park base had collapsed – it hadn’t been functional, but it was enough for Tony to figure out how it was powered, if not how it worked.

They followed the two retreating guards, Tony moving awkwardly with the added weight of the cannon, Natasha obviously keeping her pace down to accommodate him, and just as obviously annoyed with the delay. The only intel they’d been able to find on the base was the blueprints, and Tony was expecting hundreds of black-clad guards to start boiling out of the concrete any minute. He would have preferred to be in the air, but the cannon drew a lot of power, and he couldn’t afford to waste it for the sake of a little more speed. Maybe he should revisit putting wheels in the boots…

“I haven’t found Steve, but I found the security room,” Jan broke in excitedly. “There’s a whole big group of guys coming right for Clint and Sam, and a bunch of others that are going further down… I think you’re in the clear for another few hundred yards, Natasha, but there’s some guys coming up the stairs at the end of the hall. Maybe a dozen of them.”

“Acknowledged,” Nat murmured, bringing the gun back to ready and pulling away from Tony so she could reach the door before the defenders did. The door would open into the stairwell and she pressed herself against the hinged side, the muzzle of the P90 angled just above the level of the handle. Tony checked the charge on the cannon and put himself in the middle of the hallway. If he was lucky, he’d get a shot directly down the stairwell and might knock out all of the shields at once.

“Shall I withhold my strike?” Thor asked. He was stationed above the facility on top of its electrical hut, ready to take out the power.

“Hold for now,” Rhodey affirmed. “Go ahead and follow Iron Man and Widow’s path into the facility. Better to have the eyes inside; Wasp, stay where you are as long as you can. Iron Man, can you get to the security room and get me access to those cameras?”

Tony brought up the schematics, Jan’s tracker showing as a glowing yellow dot six floors below them. “Maybe, once we say hi to our new friends.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when the door jerked open and Natasha let loose with a spray of fire. Blue shield light erupted in the stairwell, for a moment lighting up the whole space into a giant bug-zapper. They fell back with startled squawks and the obvious clatter of bodies tumbling down the stairs. It was all suspiciously strange – even taken by surprise at the last base, they hadn’t been this incompetent. Natasha kicked the door open and Tony stepped into the doorway, angling the cannon down at the tumbled mass of limbs, and fired. Blue shields flashed up like a miniature fireworks display, popping and fizzing out. Natasha let the P90 swing from its strap and fired her bite down the stairs, little disks of pain flicking down at the pile of hapless defenders.

“Ouch,” Tony said, wincing sympathetically at the big mass of electric sparks.

“They’re fine,” Natasha said shortly. “Probably.”

They stepped carefully over the twitching pile of black Kevlar, but Tony stopped long enough to snag one of the shield generators before the men had regathered their wits.

“Not going to give up on that thing, are you?” Natasha asked, lips quirked in a smile.

“Clint runs into battle half naked,” was Tony’s only response, and a totally reasonable one. Natasha shrugged.

“At home, many of our warriors prefer to fight entirely in the nude,” Thor confided over Clint’s rude comment.

“I don’t believe you,” Jan said, “I demand video proof or it didn’t happen.”

“My apologies, fair warrior, but I have no recorded evidence. You will simply have to take me at my word,” Thor responded solemnly, but he sounded amused. There was a clatter up the stairs and Tony turned with repulsors charged, but it was just Thor, jumping over the pile of still-twitching bodies and landing six stairs up from Tony with a thunderous boom. “You have left me none of the fun,” he complained.

“I’m sure you’ll get your chance,” Tony said, turning to catch up to Natasha, who was already three landings ahead of them. “If this place is anything like the last place, we’ll have hundreds of them on our tail any time now.”

“You know, for such a big place, there’s not a lot of guys here,” Wasp mused. “Most of the halls are deserted, and it looks like they’ve been moving stuff out. I think we’ve caught them breaking down and packing up.”

“Let’s just hope we’ve caught them before they’ve moved Cap out with the rest of the _stuff_ ,” Rhodey said grimly.

He could feel Rhodey’s suppressed frustration. He hadn’t wanted to stay out of the fight, but taking Bruce into the base if he didn’t need to be there was just asking for trouble. Leaving him alone outside wasn’t a much better option, and Rhodey was calling the shots. Steve probably would have made the same call, and definitely would have been just as frustrated with being left out of the fight. Bruce was just as annoyed at having a babysitter, but he’d accepted it with only a resigned sort of amusement.

“We’ve found some kind of lab down here,” Sam reported. “It’s empty now, but it looks like there was some big equipment… lots of big pipes, bolts where things were pulled up…”

“Wait, I’m switching to your camera now,” Bruce said. “Can you… wait, stop there. Turn back to your left. Shine your light over that wall.”

Tony clicked into Sam’s camera and watched as Bruce directed him around the room – it was a large space. The ceiling faded out into darkness, the floor was naked concrete with irregular shapes outlined against the walls. Open metal pipes hung down from the ceiling at intervals with sheet metal tables set up between them, looking sinister stripped of their tools and equipment. Tony didn’t want to imagine what had been on those tables, but unfortunately, he had a very good imagination.

“Looks like… tanks,” Bruce said with an obvious frown in his voice. “They would have been big… seven or eight feet tall at least.”

“Not that I’m an expert or anything,” Sam said, crouching down next to a ring of protruding bolts, “But I’m going to guess they aren’t tropical fish enthusiasts.”

“Those tables are autopsy tables,” Bruce pointed out. “So I’m going to guess you’re right.”

“Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the heebie jeebies.” Clint made an exaggerated shuddering sound and his camera turned back to the door, blocked briefly by his arm as he raised his bow again.

“Clint, dollhouses give you the heebie jeebies,” Natasha remarked.

“Well, dollhouses are creepy. And so is this place. So now my heebie jeebie list includes dollhouses and dismantled labs.”

“And clowns,” she reminded him.

“No, clowns just piss me off. Have you ever met one of those fuckers?”

“What would Cap say about your language, Clint?” Jan asked in mock disapproval.

Clint laughed. “I think he’d tell me to keep my fucking mouth shut.”

“Verbatim,” Tony added, smile splitting his face. Steve was adorably PC on camera, but his soldier came out when he didn’t have press to impress, and the man had a mouth on him that could curl paint when he wasn’t paying attention to it.

“Hey… Nat? Go down another three floors,” Jan said when they got to the security room floor, “But hold up at the door. Clint, Sam… you two better go join them. I think they’re going to need help.”

“What’s up?” Sam asked, but his camera was shaking and they could hear the pounding of his boots on the concrete floor, Clint right on his heels. Considering that Sam was carrying the other cannon rigged into his wings, it was an impressive speed.

“I think every guy they’ve got on this base has ended up in on that floor. They’re guarding something, for sure. And these guys in here are getting pretty agitated. They’re speaking some kind of weird language though. I’m not even sure if it’s a real language or some kind of code.”

Coming to a plodding halt at appropriate door, Tony clicked into her line and tried to augment the ambient sound. “Jarvis, isolate out the white noise and see if we can get those voices.”

“Ms. Van Dyne, if you could perhaps move closer to the gentlemen?” Jarvis suggested politely.

“As close as you can get safely,” Rhodey added before Jan decided to land on one of their shoulders. Judging from the angle of her flight, that had been exactly what she’d planned.

“Spoilsport,” she muttered. 

The audio filled with the buzz of her wings. Tony winced away from it and turned it down while Jan navigated around the room and finally landed on a curved black surface that she was too close to for Tony to identify. “Best I can do,” she said, whispering, even though her voice barely surpassed 5 decibels even when she screamed.

The various video feeds moved off to the sides of the HUD. The two men were too far away to play their voices in real time, so Jarvis recorded and played it back on a three second lapse, speeding it up and filtering out the background sounds.

“You sure that’s just them talking?” Rhodey asked uncertainly. The sound was strangely musical and interspersed with rattling clicks, low whistles, and a curiously cat-like trilling.

“Quite sure, Colonel Rhodes,” Jarvis said, his voice just the slightest bit stiff, as if Rhodey should have known better. Well, he _should_ have known better.

“The only language I know of with those kinds of clicks is Khosian, but it’s definitely not that,” Bruce said.

“Doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard,” Nat said by way of agreement. Between the two of them, they’d set foot on nearly every country the world had to offer, and wherever they hadn’t been, Clint had – if they didn’t have a clue of what it was, no one else on the team was likely to either. Tony started running what Jarvis had already collected through every language database he could get his virtual fingers on, and didn’t get any immediate hits. He really hated these guys, whoever the hell they were.

“If I may interrupt,” Thor broke in, “They are complaining at their misfortune for having been left behind to guard the facility while more senior individuals see to the transport of equipment.”

“You recognize the language?”

“Allspeak,” Thor reminded them, “Though I regret that I can give you no clues as to its origin. All spoken language sounds the same to me.”

“Jarvis, give Thor whatever audio you can get. Thor, let us know if you hear anything we need to be aware of. Jan, stay safe in there.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Colonel Sir,” Jan replied brightly to Jarvis more respectful acknowledgement.  

Rhodey, wisely, did not respond. “Wilson, what’s your ETA to Widow’s position?”

“As long as the way stays clear,” Sam said, panting slightly under the cannon’s weight, “Should be to the stairwell in three minutes, down the stairs in another 90 seconds.”

“You should be fine,” Jan said, “Even those guys you knocked out in the hall got up and high tailed it to that floor. Well… the ones that could get up anyways. It’s strange. They know where you are, they’re just letting you go to them.”

“I don’t like it,” Rhodey groused.

“Should I just pop out and let them know that their plan isn’t sanctioned then?” Jan asked sweetly. Rhodey snorted. They exchanged barbs, but they were weirdly good friends, and it made Tony happy. Maybe a little jealous. But mostly happy.

The pounding of footsteps behind them announced Sam’s arrival. “Cheater,” he gasped as Clint beat him by a fraction of a second, slipping down a rope with his bow slung over his shoulder. Clint grinned at him, stuck out his tongue, and unclipped himself.

“Don’t mind him, Sam, he just can’t handle going the length of a mission without sliding down something.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sam leaned over slightly to put his hands on his knees while balancing the cannon, sucking in air. Clint held out the tube of his camel pack and Sam bit into it without sparing breath for a smart remark, sucking hard enough to make his cheeks hollow out. “These need to be lighter, man,” he said once he’d managed a few good swallows.

Clint popped it in his mouth immediately after, chewing on the mouthpiece and pulling on the water. “No way,” he said. “Anything that gives me an advantage over you while running needs to stay right where it is.”

“Cut the chatter,” Rhodey snapped, and they all stood up a little straighter. Tony winced; he was glad he hadn’t been the one to say it. Not only did it sound wrong coming from anyone other than Steve, it dampened the mood in the crowded stairwell right away. Rhodey didn’t apologize, but his tone was softer when he continued, “They know you’re there, and they’re ready for you. Iron Man through the door first, disable those shields. Wilson, you’re on his heels in case it doesn’t take, and Thor? Cause some goddamned mayhem if you would be so kind.”

“It will be my great pleasure,” Thor rumbled, “Though I will leave it to others to damn them.”

“Whatever floats your boat, man. Open up on your go, Tony. Be careful.”

“Sure thing, mom,” Tony promised.

“Ew, mom does not get to call other people mom,” Jan noted, lightly, dragging the energy back up from one breath to the next. “Or we’ll have to start calling Rhodes grandma, and that’s just not right.”

“Pop the door,” Tony said, grinning, and Natasha yanked the door open with the rest of the team crowded behind it. The air was immediately alight with gunfire and Jarvis registered twelve solid impacts to his torso by the time Tony got through the door with the cannon. He fired; half the guards flew backwards, knocking into their fellows and creating a brief moment of chaos that Thor charged into like a bull rhino with a bee up his ass. Tony moved aside so the others could get through the doorway, taking the second to let Jarvis run a check.

“This is becoming an alarming pattern, sir,” his AI told him, voice both disapproving and concerned. “Chestplate integrity down to 63%, and you have a hairline fracture in the topmost left oblique plate. Please do be careful, sir.”

“We’re here to get Steve out,” Tony said, by which he meant that the integrity of his chestplate didn’t matter beyond his ability to extract Steve in one piece. He stepped forward smoothly to provide cover for Clint and Nat as they moved down the hall, firing into the mess wherever Thor’s monstrous form left them an opening. The thunder god himself was in particularly godly form, and watching him fling bodies around like a kid with a handful of action figures made Tony see how past centuries might have mistaken him for something divine.

“Hey, guys? I’m pretty sure that all those clicks and whistles meant that reinforcements were on the way,” Jan said, voice going up in pitch. “Because reinforcements are _really_ on the way.”

“Then we’d best be swift!” Thor shouted. His face was split with a giant grin and he swung the hammer like a baseball bat, sending one man colliding with the wall hard enough to make a sickly crackling sound.

“Do I need to take my shirt off?” Bruce asked faintly.

“Hang on,” Rhodey said, “I’m bringing the jet around. We’ll try to head them off while they’re still in the air.”

“Someone needs to get to those doors!” Sam shouted. He was up near the ceiling, struggling to maneuver in the confined space with the extra weight of the cannon throwing off his precarious balance. Tony was impressed that he was airborne at all.

“I can get to one,” Clint announced, and then snarled a curse when his arrow hit a shield and bounced off.

Tony had his auto-targeting algorithm on and more than half of the targets still had shields, but they were all too interspersed in the mix for Sam to do anything useful with the cannon from the air. “Sam, get to the other side of this mess, fire the cannon, and then drop it. Everyone else better hold onto something,” Tony advised.

Sam landed unsteadily in the hallway beyond the fighting, one wing snapping forward to protect his chest from a stray bullet, and fired the cannon. The blast released in the tight space with an ear-ringing _whomp_ and blue light exploded in the crowd, crackling over the din of combat. Thor was thrown ass-over-teakettle into a mob of frenzied, black-masked goons. Natasha shielded herself through the simple expediency of jumping into Tony’s arms in a posture so similar to Steve’s that Tony caught her as if she had a shield she needed to keep away from her body. He’d turned his back to the blast and they weathered it with only a stumble.

Natasha patted him on the top of the head, and in a dizzying move that he didn’t quite catch, flipped up onto his shoulders, and used the cannon like a tripod for half a dozen shots from her bite before flipping off and landing around some unsuspecting guy’s shoulders.

“Made it into one of the rooms,” Clint said. “Empty. There’s three more in the space they were protecting, and six more beyond.”

“I’m already over here in beyond-land,” Sam said as the cannon hit the floor with a great crash. “I’ll start ringing doorbells.”

With a bellowing shout of a warcry, Thor managed to get out from under the dogpile of black Kevlar, flinging one man aside and coming up with another’s ankle instead of his hammer. Not seeming to notice, he flung the man into three of his fellows with enough force to send a handful of them flying, and then held his hand out for Mjolnir.

“I’ll start on the other side of the hall,” Tony offered, not too keen on getting between Thor and his ‘fun’ for the day. The man looked about two seconds away from a Hulk transformation of his own, if his transformation were spurred on by sheer joy and bloodlust.

Dropping his own cannon with a relieved groan, Tony kicked his jets on and spun a half circle with repulsors firing, making some room for himself just in time to dodge Mjolnir. The hammer seemed to have developed a mind of its own and it was flying around the hallway like it was trying to make up for the lack of Steve’s shield.

As if she’d read his mind, Jan excitedly announced, “I found Cap’s shield! It’s on the fourth floor. Should I go get it?”

She didn’t get an immediate response from Rhodey and it was almost physically painful for Tony to keep his mouth shut. Just before he was ready to give up on the _butt your nose out of command when you’re not in command_ routine, Rhodey answered, “Only if you can get there and get out of the facility with it safely. You’re not going to be able to shrink again if you’re trying to carry the shield.”

“You think?” Jan said with the verbal equivalent of an eye roll, but her video feed blurred and she was on the move even as she spoke.

“Now all we need is a Cap to go along with the shield,” Tony said, “Kind of ruins the value of the set otherwise.”

“Well, it’s already out of the box, so – shit! Okay, door number two is a fucking hole in the ground, seriously, what the fuck?” Clint shouted while his camera reeled, his breath caught in his throat and his vitals going wild. His spike of panic lasted only a second and then he perked up. “Hey, push some of those assholes through here, Thor. Let’s see how deep it is.”

“As you like, friend archer!” Thor boomed, and started driving figures toward Clint’s open door. Clint waved them through like an usher, helpfully tripping two who tried to brace themselves on the door jam. Tony had a vague thought that Steve wouldn’t approve of the reckless killing when there was a chance that these men were (relatively) innocent, just doing a job they were paid for, but Tony wasn’t inclined to put a stop to it when these guys or their organization were holding Steve captive.

Tony finally got through the press of bodies to one of the doors they hadn’t tried, found it locked, and stood to the side. He narrowed the repulsor beam down as tight as it would go and aimed at the lock, adjusting the angle so it had the least likelihood of hitting Steve if he were inside. Hopefully, if Steve were inside, he would have heard the melee outside the door and moved away. Knowing Steve, he was just as likely to be pressed against the door shouting orders, so Tony yelled through the door for him to step back.

“We’re running out of minions to feed to the random hole in the floor, Tony, you going to get that door open any time soon?” Clint asked. He sounded cheerful enough, but Tony could hear the fatigue. Off to Tony’s left, Natasha performed a neat flip and drove her heel into the nearest minion’s head. He went down with a wet grunt and she put her back to Tony’s vulnerable left side. She didn’t even come up to his shoulder when he was in the armor, but he felt instantly better with her by his side.

As soon as he had the metal weakened enough, he stepped back, turned around, and aimed his heel at the weakened side of the door. It dented, groaned, but didn’t give. Shouting with the effort and putting his maneuvering thrusters to work, he kicked back again. The door popped open with a _boom_ that could be heard over the clamor of gradually slowing combat. A trio of enraged goons rushed past Natasha, and charged at him before he could get through the door. He had to turn away from the dark room, shoving them off in Thor’s approximate direction and batting away rifle barrels.

“You guys need to hurry up,” Rhodey said. “They’ve landed two transports and I can’t get them all.”

“Please don’t release the Hulk on us again,” Clint begged.

“Might have to if you don’t get Cap and get out of there.”

“I’d rather not spend the rest of the day tearing through concrete,” Bruce added, “So I would prefer it if everyone could just leave in one piece this time?”

Sam dive-bombed a man doing his best to fire a shot directly into Tony’s face. Both of them went tumbling down the hallway, rolling over bodies and debris and making a racket of curses and grunts. Flicking his external lights on, Tony forged into the dark room with his gaze angled down to avoid another ‘random hole in the floor.’ It was a small space, the walls made of the same poured concrete, empty except for an uncovered three inch drainage pipe in the middle of the room. The floor slopped alarming to the pipe. Everything was wet, sprinklers set in the low ceiling still dripping. Feeling sick to his stomach, he swept the light to the corners, and finally found a shape huddled in the corner behind the door.

“Steve!” he breathed, horrified and relieved all at once. He stumbled forward and Steve curled tighter into his corner. He was naked, soaked, and shivering, hair plastered to his scalp and skin looking almost translucent in the helmet lights.

“Steve, it’s me, you’re safe,” he said helplessly as Steve tried to claw his way along the wall, groping with his eyes screwed shut, face tucked down into his shoulder. Tony flipped the bright floodlight off, replacing it with a somber red glow that only made the scene more grisly. He dropped to his knees, aware of the commotion in the hall and Rhodey’s increasingly tense orders for them to get out, but Steve was obviously terrified and Tony couldn’t just grab him. Beyond all the many reasons that manhandling someone who had been in captivity for over two months was a _bad idea_ , Steve could do some damage if he lashed out at Tony trying to defend himself.

Drawing the faceplate back, Tony turned on the strip lights that outlined the suit’s curves, holding his breath against the powerful scent of sewage wafting up from the pipe. “Hey, Steve. It’s Tony. The team’s here – we’re going to get you out. Can you hear me?” He felt more than heard the rest of the team crowding into the doorway and held a hand out when Steve’s eyes flickered over to them.

“Tony?” Steve croaked weakly in a voice that sounded alien, dried and filled with tumbling stones.

“Yeah,” Tony said, biting back the instant surge of anger. Steve should never sound like that and it rattled him to his core. “It’s me.”

“Tony!” Steve cried, launching himself away from the corner and nearly knocking Tony over with the force of his weight. His hands fisted in Tony’s hair hard enough to make his scalp sting, and then his mouth was on Tony’s, their lips slamming together, Steve’s tongue pushing roughly, desperately past his teeth. His mouth was dry and tasted like morning, and Steve was _kissing him_? Tony’s brain short-circuited for a dozen frenzied beats, and then Steve jerked away and peppered his face with rough kisses.

“I knew you would come for me,” he said between harsh kisses that were almost bites. “I knew.”

“Of course I came for you, Winghead,” Tony fumbled out. He wrapped his arms around Steve’s ribs; the man was shaking so hard that Tony could feel it through the suit. “But let’s get you out of here before we end up being cellmates, okay?”

Steve stopped his kissing assault and went momentarily still against his chest. His expression was just barely visible in the red glow of Tony’s strip lights, hesitant and confused. “Oh, god, Tony… I am. Sorry, I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Tony said quickly, “But let’s talk about all the reasons you don’t need to apologize when we’re somewhere that smells a little better?” He mustered up a shaking smile from the pit of shock that had opened in his gut.

“Right,” Steve agreed, sounding more like himself, even if the words still seemed like they’d gone through a saw mill on the way to his lips. Clint approached carefully from Tony’s left and crouched down next to them. He felt for Steve’s hand and pushed the water tube into his palm. Steve stared at it blankly for several seconds, as if not recognizing it, and then shoved it between his teeth and sucked, gnawing on the tip so hard that Tony was surprised it didn’t come off.

“Not too much,” Clint cautioned, pinching the tube to cut off the flow of water. “Don’t want you to throw up.”

Steve gave him a mutinous look. For a second, Tony was sure he was going to punch the archer and wrestle the tube away, but he finally nodded and let the mouthpiece fall from between his lips. “I need my shield.”

“I’ve already got it topside for you, Blue Eyes,” Jan said quietly. “Just waiting for you to get back to it.”

Steve nodded, glanced down at himself. “I’m naked.”

“Nothing we haven’t seen before, Cap,” Rhodey pointed out, his voice just as gentle, but urgent. “We really need to go.”

“Right,” Steve said again. He stood up too quickly, moaned, and stumbled into the wall with one hand clutching his head.

Tony was on his feet a second later, one of Steve’s arms slung over his shoulders. Clint was just a breath behind him and they helped Steve hobble into the hallway. He winced at the bright light, making a sound of breathless discomfort and squeezing his eyes shut. Sam was there a second later with his red-tinted goggles, slipping them over Steve’s head and adjusting the strap as fast as thought. Thor followed right behind with his cloak torn away from his pauldrons. He wrapped the long length of fabric around Steve’s body in a quick toga, and then backed away, his jaw tight and eyes flinty, all signs of mirth gone.

“Tony?” Steve asked quietly, leaning against him, “Can we go home?”

“Yeah.” It felt like _he_ had rocks in his throat. “Yeah, let’s go home. We even have tomato-basil things waiting for you in the fridge.”

Steve laughed breathlessly. It sounded mostly like a sob, but it was still Steve, alive in his arms – he would take it. Tony tightened his grip


	3. Three

 

Steve felt a strange sense of disembodiment as he struggled to keep up with his team. He had the vague notion that nothing was where he expected it to be. It was like those first few months on the USO tour when he was still getting used to his new body and he’d just felt _big_ and _long_ and all knees and elbows. He pushed away from the support of Tony’s shoulders to run alongside, but his left ankle turned and he stumbled. Tony swept him up without breaking stride, and Steve ended up in his arms like a bride. It felt simultaneously familiar and embarrassing and he wasn’t sure how to parse out the conflicting feelings.

Tony lifted off the floor as they approached the door. Steve’s stomach went right through his spine, and it was absolutely amazing to be flying again. He sucked in a breath and let it out as a laugh that cracked on the dryness in his throat. Tony’s arms tightened around him as he leveled out, Steve scrabbling at his shoulders for purchase, not sure how to position his weight. It seemed like it should just be natural, but he couldn’t get himself to fit right, and the armor felt cold and slick where it touched naked skin.

“Just relax, Cap,” Tony said very quietly. He hadn’t pulled the faceplate back up. Steve knew that was for his benefit and it annoyed him – Tony shouldn’t be sacrificing his safety to make Steve feel better. But it _did_ make him feel better. “I’ve got you,” Tony added.

Steve felt his shoulders unlock and he just fell into place, weight settled perfectly between Tony’s arms, ear resting comfortably on his shoulder. Thor and Sam went through the door first, Thor vaulting through with his hammer above his head and smacking it into the snow on the way down. A wave of powder and electricity crackled out along with a roll of sheer force that knocked down the leading edge of armed men rushing at them. Sam was right on his heels with Red Wing doing barrel rolls next to him, shooting into the running crowd.

Steve flinched away from the rush of black clad figures, their blank masks instilling a knot of terror under his ribcage. He hid his face against Tony’s neck. It was a perfectly reasonable response to the sudden gust of chilly air up the sparse covering of Thor’s cloak wrapped around him.

“Rhodey, get the ramp open!” Tony called, rocketing directly upward for the cloud cover. Steve just tried to make himself as small of a burden as possible and kept his eyes off the battle on the ground.

A roar of engines drew his eyes up. The quinjet was above and ahead of them, making a hair point to swing the back end around. Tony brought his feet forward to break their momentum and landed on the ramp. Gravity got a good grip on them for a heart-squeezing moment, but then Tony got traction and stumbled into the jet as the ramp started to lift. Tony dropped Steve to the medbed by going down to his knees so Steve caught on the mattress. Steve knew he needed to let go, and he wanted Tony back out there helping the team. He wanted Tony in his helmet, and he wanted his shield. He didn’t want to be left alone.

“I’ll be right back, Steve, but you need to let me go,” Tony said gently. His lips were tight and his eyes were wide, and Steve felt miserable for making him worry.

“Let’s get you some fluids, alright?” Bruce said gently as Tony nudged him onto his back, making Steve jump at the intrusion. He didn’t like being on his back, Bruce leaning over him, and he didn’t like the light up above him, but he wasn’t completely sure why.

“Be right back,” Tony promised again and gently pulled away. Steve reluctantly let him go and Tony hesitated just a moment, lips compressing like he was stopping himself from speaking before he tore himself away. He fell off the back of the jet, leaving Steve alone with Bruce, who was obviously doing his best to look smaller and less threatening. Steve wasn’t threatened, except he could feel his heart jumping in his throat and his legs trembling.

“Would you prefer to sit up?” Bruce asked softly and Steve could finally breathe. Bruce helped him bring his legs around and get upright, and then busied himself flipping off lights and drawing the curtain. They rarely used the medbed as an actual medbed – generally it was a bunk for one of them to catch some sleep going to or from a mission. Steve couldn’t remember ever seeing the curtain drawn, but he felt better with the space dim and close.

“Let’s get these off of you,” Bruce suggested, reaching up slowly for Steve’s face. When Steve didn’t jerk back from him, he gently pulled the goggles away. Steve was belatedly concerned for Sam, flying as fast as he did without the eye protection. He blinked as the red hue was lifted – the curtained bay was dim, but not dark. It still felt bright to him, almost uncomfortably so, but it was better than total darkness, and better than blinding light.

“I’m going to hook you up to an IV,” Bruce warned as he pulled on a pair of gloves and cracked open an alcohol swab. Steve didn’t try to struggle and didn’t feel any more upset at the thought than he had before being taken. He puzzled at that as he watched Bruce wrap the rubber band around his bicep, squeezed automatically to get the vein to lift, and breathed through the pinprick of pain as the IV slid in.

“I can’t remember much,” Steve volunteered. He could tell Bruce wanted to ask but also wanted to be delicate. “Just… bright lights, darkness. Water.” He shook his head. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine, Steve.” Bruce patted him very gently on the shoulder. It felt like a win – Bruce didn’t offer physical affection, and just barely tolerated it from anyone other than Tony. “You don’t have to force yourself.”

Bruce built up cushions and pillows into an incline for him so he could lean back against it without being flat on his back. The jet touched down just as Bruce was pulling a blanket up to his chin, and Steve listened for footsteps – Jan, Thor, Clint, Sam, Natasha, and finally Tony. He let out a relieved breath, and his eyes were closed on the next inhale.

~*~

Steve woke slowly. His head was tipped back on a pillow, the room around him was dark walled, dim, and comfortably warm. There were pink unicorn stickers on the ceiling. It was also dry, lacking the stench of wet metal and bodily waste. He searched blindly for a familiar landmark, and finally landed on a slumped figure of red and gold.

“Tony,” he breathed. He didn’t completely believe that Tony was really there until Iron Man started with a sharp inhale and looked around, wide-eyed. He scrubbed a hand across his face, gauntlets on the shelf beside him.

“Steve.” Tony sounded breathless, almost frightened, as if worried that Steve would turn to smoke in front of him. It was a mirror to his own voice. Tony cleared his throat and moved from the bench to the chair at Steve’s bedside. He parted his lips to speak, stopped, and then shifted his weight forward and grabbed a bottle of water.

Unscrewing the cap, he dropped a straw into it and held it out within Steve’s reach. Steve could hear the suit’s servos whirling, the almost inaudible click of the joints locking, and wondered why Tony hadn’t taken it off. He leaned forward and took the straw between his lips, pulling on it cautiously. The water tasted sweet and felt like silk on his tongue. He sipped it again, felt it hit his empty belly like a rock dropped in a puddle. He waited for his stomach to settle, but he didn’t release the straw in case Tony took it away from him. With his servos locked, Tony could have just about stayed there all day, and he looked like he was set to do just that. Steve took a careful sip, and then another.

There was a rustling behind the curtain and Steve felt himself sinking into the pillows before he identified Bruce’s footsteps.

“It’s alright,” Bruce said, and Steve realized that he’d pulled guiltily away from the straw. Bruce slid into the medical alcove with a tablet held between his hands. “There’s some glucose in it, just take it slow. I haven’t been able to run all the tests I need to yet, but you look like you’re in good condition. Considering.” He glanced up, and then back at the tablet, fingers tapping slightly at the underside. He looked like he would have preferred a clipboard with pages that he could rustle back and forth.

“Of course,” he continued, “Can’t tell how much of that is the serum.”

“I’m fine,” Steve said, but he felt weirdly fragile, suddenly small on the bed when he’d felt so big and out of place when Tony had pulled him from the cell. In the space of that instant, he was transported back to the tiny, cluttered tenement he’d shared with his mother and two other families, a medical student leaning over him. His mother hadn’t been able to afford a doctor, and Steve had been sure that the student was only there because of the very obvious crush he’d had on Sarah Rogers. Steve had said the same thing to the worried medical student who’d had nothing to offer them but the prescriptions his training called for and they couldn’t afford. _I’m fine._ At least it was the truth now.

His chest tightened in a strange twist that he hadn’t felt in years. Decades, really, it had been decades. He knew it wasn’t possible for him to have fits anymore and just forced his chest to expand, willed his body stop reacting to phantoms. It mostly worked.

“Really,” he said to Bruce’s questioning glance. “I feel fine. Tired, sore, and my stomach is trying to flip inside out, but fine.”

Bruce eyed the IV. Steve recognized the nutrients pouch, the saline solution. He already felt much better than he had crouched in that cell. Tony was still holding the water out – Steve wrapped his lips around the straw and drew deeply on it for Bruce’s benefit.

Letting out a gusty sigh, Bruce said, “We really need an actual physician.”

“You’re doing great, buddy,” Tony said brightly, “And you know more about biology and medical voodoo than most quacks anyways.” He tossed Bruce a wink.

Bruce suppressed a chuckle. “As long as I’m better than _most_ quacks.” Hugging the tablet to his chest, he asked, “Do you need anything?”

“Well, I _am_ still waiting for my tomato-basil things,” Steve mused. Bruce smiled with obvious relief.

“I’ll get right on that,” he said, squeezing back out around the curtain and making sure it was firmly closed behind him.

Steve took another sip of the glucose solution and leaned his head back, listening as the suit’s joints unlocked so Tony could withdraw his arm. He set the bottle aside and ran a thumb over his left wrist lock where the missing gauntlet would click into place.

“About…earlier,” Steve started, doing his best not to fiddle. “I’m sorry. I was just. Confused?”

“Confused,” Tony said, frowning, his expression gone cautious.

“Not about who you were, or anything. I just. For a second I had this idea that we were. That you and I were together.” Steve swallowed hard. He felt like he should be embarrassed, but he was too tired. He could clearly recall the moment of memory – what he’d mistaken for memory – of waking up next to Tony, kissing him awake, wrapping his arms around the other man in a dozen different moments, making fast and messy love still half in his uniform, Tony still in the chest plate and one gauntlet. Fantasies. They’d seemed real enough in that frenzied moment. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t,” Tony said, but he was still frowning, still careful.

“I would like that,” Steve blurted out. He would’ve liked it more if he could blame his sudden openness on drugs, but he knew from experience that he couldn’t have been on anything even if Bruce had tried to medicate him. “You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson about waiting too long for the time to be right, but I’ve always been stubborn that way. I don’t want to miss you like I missed Peggy, like I missed Bucky. If this has made me realize anything, it’s that.”

He’d seen it a few times, the glimmer of _maybe_ when he and Tony were alone, those rare moments when the world didn’t need immediate saving, and all of the dozens of other things that pulled their individual attention were quiet. There had been dozens of micromoments when Steve had known that if he’d just leaned forward, Tony would have met him half way. He’d always pulled back – there was the team to be worried about, and Tony shared command with him. They were always under public scrutiny and a relationship with him (him being _male_ ) could have caused problems with Tony’s business contracts, public relations issues for the Avengers and the charities they supported. After all that time in the darkness, not sure if he was ever going to see his friends again, it seemed like a silly thing to be worried about. They could work that out.

“Steve.” Tony stared at him, lips parted, the furrow between his brows getting deeper.

“You don’t feel the same way?” Steve guessed tentatively, because it wasn’t like he was the best at reading people. He’d gotten that wrong before. At least Tony wouldn’t punch him for the mistake.

Tony scrubbed at his face again, leaving brief streaks of red in the wake of his fingernails. “Steve, you have _no idea_ how long I’ve wanted you to say that.”

“But…” Steve prompted.

“ _But_ … you’ve been in captivity, and God knows what they’ve done to you, and people make strange, rash decisions when rescued from that kind of situation. I should know.” His lips jerked up into something that was too bitter and harsh to be a smile.

“It’s not a rash decision,” Steve said firmly, “It’s been a long time coming, and I didn’t want to go another hour without saying it. Just in case the world decides to end sixty-one minutes from now.” Or he woke up another century into the future. He shuddered.

Tony snorted a laugh, and then reached forward and took Steve’s hand. His hands were calloused, his normally immaculate nails jagged and a little long, dirty underneath. Steve could see all the signs that Tony hadn’t been taking care of himself. He was ashamed that he was the obvious cause of it, but he knew he wouldn’t have been any better if their positions had been reversed. He brought Tony’s hand up to his lips, feeling the suit’s mild resistance in the process. He kissed Tony’s fingertips, and then glanced up at a soft, distressed sound. Tony’s eyes were wet, his lips pulled into a line that wasn’t quite hidden by his scruffy facial hair.

Bracing one hand on the bed, Tony leaned up and kissed him gently on the corner of each eye, and then the edge of his jaw. He tipped forward to press his forehead against Steve’s temple, his breath coming out harsh and moist. Steve reached up to hold him there, eyes falling closed all on their own, enjoying the soft press of Tony’s skin against his. Tony was the one who finally pulled away, clearing his throat roughly.

“Let’s get you feeling a hundred percent,” he said with forced cheerfulness, “And then we’ll talk life-changing decisions.”

“Your bed or mine?” Steve pressed by way of response, which made Tony sputter on an incredulous laugh. “I don’t want to sleep alone anymore,” Steve confessed with more honesty than he’d meant to.

Tony swallowed hard enough for Steve to hear it. He drew in and released a shuddering breath, looked up and offered, “Mine’s bigger.”

Steve hummed. His heart thudded hard against his ribs and he was shaking again, though this time in relief. He smiled, made his voice be steady, and said, “We’ll see.”

~*~

Nothing in Tony’s life had ever been easy. Well, no, that was a lie. There were things that had been easy, or had at least seemed easy until he’d stepped back to see the actual cost. The bottle had been easy, the drugs had been easy, continuing on with the family business had been easy. Letting himself believe unquestioningly the lie that they were on the right side of every pair of hands that fired a Stark weapon had been easy.

Steve moved around Tony’s space like he’d always belonged there, and it seemed _easy_. Despite Tony’s gentle suggestion that maybe Steve should consider another bed for the night, Steve was in his bedroom in nothing but a towel, carefully laying a pair of shorts and a t-shirt out on the side of the bed. Tony knew that any of the others would have slept with him. Nat hadn’t been out of hearing range since they’d gotten Steve back to the tower, though she’d been careful to seem like she wasn’t hovering. He was pretty sure that she was going to be sleeping outside the door for the foreseeable future. Thor had unabashedly offered space in his custom made double-king four poster, and Sam had just squeezed his shoulder and said, _whatever you need, man._

Steve should have gone with one of them if he wanted to be with anyone at all, but he’d politely refused their offers, taken Tony’s hand, and walked determinedly for Tony’s bedroom. Nothing about his body language had suggested sex as he’d bustled around to and from the bathroom like it was a nightly routine (and when had Steve stashed a toothbrush in there?). Tony could only watch while pretending he wasn’t watching, at a loss for what to do. He’d more than half expected a few threatening text messages, but all he’d gotten was a note from Bruce to make sure Steve had some water before he went to bed.

When Tony had gotten back from Afghanistan, he’d been simultaneously terrified to be alone and unable to handle company. He’d wanted Pepper or Rhodey or Happy in sight at all times, but as soon as they were there, he’d just wanted to crawl away and barricade his door.  Tony sat helplessly at his desk, playing around with the schematics for the personal shield he’d pulled off the stairwell goon, not getting anything done but trying not to let on that he was panicking just a tiny bit. Maybe he should barricade the door. Would it make Steve feel better, or make him feel trapped?

Steve stripped out of his towel, entirely unselfconscious of his nudity, and pulled on the boxer-briefs. Tony noted that he tugged them on so his dick was pointed up, flat against his pelvis, and then ran his fingers around the elastic with an automatic bounce to settle himself comfortably. Tony didn’t think he’d ever noticed the way a bed partner put on his underwear before. He tried to think about how he put on his own underwear, and then stopped because, Jesus, not the freaking time. Steve didn’t seem to have noticed Tony’s attention.  He pulled the t-shirt on – two sizes too small, and it might have actually been one of Tony’s, and didn’t that just do funny things to his insides? With a small, shy smile in Tony’s direction (still not looking, busy over here, can’t you tell?), Steve slid under the covers and picked up a much-thumbed book.

“Is this okay?” Steve asked. Tony almost jumped out of his skin at the suddenness of his voice cutting through the tension. Steve clarified, “Do you have a side of the bed you prefer?”

“Uh. No,” Tony managed, truthfully. He rarely ended up on a designated side of the bed – hadn’t since Pepper – he just fell into it and passed out wherever he landed. Usually he wasn’t even oriented to the head of the bed. It was very strange to realize that he was going to have a side of the bed. At least for the night.

“Do you mind me sleeping in here?” Steve asked after a moment of silence, making Tony jump again. “I realize that I didn’t really ask.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Tony said. He glanced over to see Steve looking uncertain, his fingers running over the book’s cover restlessly. _Journey to the Center of the Earth_. Tony wondered if Steve had read it before the war, before the ice, or if it was something he’d picked up afterward. It seemed like the kind of thing a young Steve would have been drawn to – adventure, danger, the impossible given life.

Tony finally shut the holoprojector down. It wasn’t like he was going to do anything useful and Steve’s lack of motion was as loud and distracting as a siren behind him.  He went through his own nightly routine – ha, routine – and then dropped to the floor for a few minutes of yoga, conscious through it all of Steve’s curious gaze following him through swan dives, downward dogs, twists, and bridges. Steve was studiously staring at his book when Tony pushed himself off the floor. Pretending that they did this every night, Tony took a change of clothes to the bathroom for a shower. Afterwards, he was so hyper aware of how he was putting his underwear on that he didn’t manage it correctly. He was left uncomfortable, but strangely unwilling to adjust himself, even though he was out of Steve’s line of sight.

“Christ,” he muttered, half angry and half amused, and shoved a hand down his pants to fit himself more comfortably in the cradle of the snug fabric.

Steve was staring off into space when Tony made it back into the bedroom, the book lying forgotten in his lap, his expression distant and flat, eyes glassy. Looking at him made Tony’s chest ache, and he finally understood the tortured expression he’d found on Pepper’s face so many times when he’d caught his mind wandering after Afghanistan. He felt so powerless.

“Do you want me to leave the door open?” Tony asked softly, breaking Steve out of whatever dark scene he’d drifted into. Steve sucked in a short, sharp breath, and looked up at Tony like he wasn’t sure where he was. It lasted only a moment and was gone before Tony could figure out what to say.

“Only if you want to. Could we. Is it alright if we leave a light on though? Just tonight?”

“I usually sleep with a light on,” Tony confessed. Jarvis helpfully dimmed the main lights, turning on Steve’s bedside lamp and the strip of lights that ran around the baseboards.

Steve ducked his head and nodded gratefully, his cheeks blazing red with embarrassment. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. Don’t apologize. It’s fine.” Tony tugged at his damp hair and then realized he was still standing awkwardly at the bathroom door. He crossed the room and hovered awkwardly at the bedside instead. It was a standard king, not the monster Thor had in his suite, but it felt like it was either too big or too small. He wasn’t sure if he should hug the edge of the bed and give Steve his space or lay more toward the middle and make sure Steve knew he was open for… whatever. Cuddling? Human nightlight? He glanced down to make sure the reactor was visible through his tank top. As Jarvis continued to dim the lights over the next thirty minutes, it would seem even brighter. That was good. He remembered Bruce’s order for water and pulled a bottle out of the bedside cabinet, holding it out. Steve took it, dutifully twisted the cap off and took a sip before setting it aside. Tony considered asking him to drink more, but Steve was an adult and Tony could remember clearly how much he’d hated being babied.  

“Sam would have probably made a better bedmate,” Tony said finally, letting his breath out on a frustrated huff. Sam knew how to deal with this stuff. Well, maybe not _this stuff_ – he wasn’t a counselor (yet), not a POW specialist, but he worked with vets. His degree was in clinical psychology. He was in a graduate counseling program. What did Tony know?

“Sam is an octopus in bed,” Steve said unexpectedly. He gave Tony a small, secretive smile, lips twitching up just slightly at the corners. “He can fall asleep anywhere, but somehow he always ended up taking three-quarters of the bed and all the blankets. He was usually half on top of me by morning. But you put him on a couch and he won’t even twitch the whole night.”

Tony laughed despite himself, and had no trouble imagining Sam as an unconscious cuddler – he was easy with physical affection and had never had any trouble being in someone else’s space. Tony was curious about Sam and Steve sharing beds – of course he was – but he wasn’t going to ask. He assumed it was during the months they’d spent on the road looking for Bucky until a lack of leads and duty had called Steve back to New York.

Tony finally got into bed and decided on a compromise: half an arm’s length away from the edge, on his back. Steve would have plenty of space if he wanted it, but it was an open door if he didn’t. He shifted his shoulders restlessly, trying to find a position that was comfortable on his neck and back at the same time. Steve remained carefully still next to him while he struggled with the pillows, and then the blankets until he was satisfied that he could make it through the night without turning into an octopus himself.

The darkness deepened so gradually that it almost wasn’t noticeable, the baseboard lights seeming to glow brighter, Steve’s bedside lamp a yellow island in the dimness. Steve continued to read, or at least turned the pages for a few more minutes, and then finally turned the light off and slid down to rest on the pillows. Tony noticed that he’d built them up into a slight incline so he wasn’t flat on the mattress. After several quiet seconds, Steve reached over tentatively and touched Tony’s hand with two fingers. Tony turned his hand over and didn’t make a noise when Steve let out a relieved breath and laced their fingers together.

~*~

A sharp pain in his hand woke him. Tony jolted upright with an aborted shout, yanking automatically, but the pressure just tightened further and Tony finally realized that it was Steve squeezing his hand. Another few pounds of pressure and he might have some fingers broken or popped out of socket.

Sucking in breath through his teeth, Tony moved carefully and set his free hand on Steve’s shoulder. The man was flat on his back, the pillows all knocked into a loose circle around him, his eyes squeezed tightly together, lips open and panting in short, quick breaths. His spine seemed to have locked up, and his thighs were twitching and jumping, but no more than a few inches, as if he were restrained.

“Steve,” Tony said very softly. Steve twitched, and his hand tightened further, making Tony wince and bite into his lip. “Steve, you’re safe. It’s just me, you’re at home, in a clean bed, it’s not dark. You’re okay.” He kept repeating himself, whispered reassurance, his free hand squeezing rhythmically on Steve’s shoulder. It was a struggle not to try pulling his trapped hand away, but Steve slowly loosened his grip until Tony was able to ease his fingers away.

“Tony?” Steve mumbled, relaxing abruptly. He drew in a full breath and shifted in his nest of pillows, pushing himself up to his elbows.

“I’m here,” Tony soothed, moving his hand out of Steve’s sight to wiggle some feeling back into his fingers. “You were having a nightmare.”

Steve swallowed hard, his tongue making a sticky sound against the roof of his mouth. Tony leaned over him to grab the abandoned bottle of water and helped him sit up, offering it to him. Steve huddled against him unabashedly, shivering although he was putting out so much heat that it was almost uncomfortable to hold him. He guzzled the water in one long pull and set his head against Tony’s shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said, lips brushing Tony’s neck. The bottle crinkled in his hand – crinkle, release, crinkle, release. “Sorry.”

“Hey, we all have them,” Tony reminded him. “I still dream about the cave, the water, Vanko… there are so many. You never have to apologize for that.”

“Usually,” Steve said, working the words over slowly like he was chewing them in reverse. “Usually it’s my mother on her deathbed. Bucky and the train – a lot. Most often it’s just. Cold. I don’t remember anything about being in the ice, but I dream all the time about being trapped in it. This is different. I can’t. I’m not even sure what I’m dreaming. I’m just… in the dark, very scared, and alone, and… I feel guilty.”

Tony frowned. “Guilty?” he asked, even though he should have kept his mouth shut.

Steve shrugged, but he nodded slightly. “I don’t know why.”

“You’re going to feel a lot of things you don’t understand,” Tony finally said, echoing the words of the counselor Obie had made him see after his return from Afghanistan. For his welfare, of course. He’d probably meant for it to further his case with the board that Tony was unfit to lead the company, but he’d unintentionally done something positive for Tony. The counselor had been chosen by Pepper, thoroughly vetted by Jarvis, and Tony had kept her on retainer ever since.

“Do you want to talk to someone?” he offered tentatively.

“I’m talking to you,” Steve said, bewildered.

“I meant. Someone professional. I have someone I can recommend.”

“A head shrink?” Steve’s voice shot past offended and right into the realm of sickened anger, though he didn’t pull away. The plastic bottle collapsed in his hand, letting out a loud protest to the mistreatment. It seemed to take Steve a second to realize that he was the cause of the noise, and he let the bottle go. It uncrinkled with a pitiful noise in his lap.

“I see her twice a month when we’re not out saving the world,” Tony said casually, deciding not to protest _head shrink_ on Doctor Vryce’s behalf. He could have pointed out that Sam was going into the same field, but he didn’t want to start a fight that he wouldn’t win. He knew that Steve had been briefed on the mental health field, understood that it didn’t have as much negativity attached to it anymore, but like so many people (so many men) it was something for _other people,_ people who were sick in the head. Not for him, not for Captain America. Hell, Tony had been in therapy for years and it wasn’t like he advertised it. He wasn’t immune to the feeling of shame that came along with admitting that he – Iron Man, successful businessman, genius – needed help.

“I’ll need to be certified for active duty,” Steve said finally, voice tight and unhappy. He shifted restlessly in Tony’s arms like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands, or he was trying to crawl out of his skin “I’ll talk to someone then.”

Tony was careful to mind his tone when he answered, “Let me know if you change your mind.”

Steve went gradually still. He was quiet for a dozen heartbeats, and then said, “Sorry for waking you up.”

Glancing at the clock, Tony said, “Hey, I got a whole four hours of sleep. Best night I’ve had in about three years.”

Steve snorted, but he just nuzzled closer to Tony’s neck and didn’t protest when Tony eased them back to the bed. Steve ended up half on his stomach, head propped up on Tony’s chest with one arm across his stomach and one knee thrown over Tony’s thigh. Steve curled his hand protectively around the reactor, and drifted back to sleep.  Tony lay awake for the better part of an hour, trapped by Steve’s bulk, but not bothered by it. He felt comfortably restrained in a way that was surprising to him – he hadn’t been comfortable with restraint since that bad night in Morocco, and for years after Afghanistan he could barely stand even clothing that was too tight, but just knowing that it was _Steve_ made it different.

~*~

The next day, Tony had a new bed delivered. Both sides inclined independently at the touch of a button, though it made the most irritating noise as it moved, and it was so slow that it made Tony cringe. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do until he could design something better. When Steve tentatively crept into the room that night, Tony just pulled him over to the bed and hopped into the middle to show him the features.

“I know it’s not perfect, and what is even _with_ this hospital bed humming? You’d think they’d have taken into account –”

Steve kissed him, swallowing his building rant. Tony felt his stomach jerk. He tried to pull away, conscious of how fragile Steve was even if he didn’t realize it himself, warning bells shrieking in his head that it would be too easy to take advantage of this, too easy to mold Steve into something he didn’t really want. Steve’s hand tightened on the back of his neck to keep him from getting too far away, not tight enough that Tony couldn’t escape if he really wanted to, but tight enough to let him know that Steve wanted him to stay.

“Thank you,” Steve whispered against his lips.

Tony swallowed hard and gently disentangled himself. He put a careful two feet of space between them, saw Steve sizing it up, and smiled. “Anything for you,” he said to take the sting out of it.  Steve ducked his head, but he reached out and took Tony’s hand.


	4. Four

Chapter Four

Fog partially obscured the Brooklyn Bridge, turning it into some kind of solitary monster rising out of the mists. It was still dark when he’d started the run, the air cool and moist. It was the first time he’d ventured out of the tower alone since he’d been brought back, and he’d waited for the panic as soon as he’d felt the moisture on his face, but the air was as fresh and clean as New York could manage. Rather than making his chest constrict, it had felt like the first gasp after being submerged.

He’d left the tower at a quarter to three, and had meant to be back before the sun rose, but his feet wouldn’t turn back toward home. He kept up a steady, ground churning pace, through Central Park and then down 5th Avenue. The sidewalks had been all but empty when he’d left the Tower, but he was dodging early morning foot traffic by the time he made it to the bridge.

Steve stared up at the behemoth of concrete and wire as he ran, the sun crept over the horizon, turning it briefly red. It would be a beautiful day. He could run the bridge, run the park on the other side, maybe run all the way back to the neighborhood he’d grown up in, the apartments that stood where his last tenement had been. He could stand outside the building and stare up at it until someone got suspicious.

He slowed his run to a comfortable jog, and then to a fast walk, planting his hands on his hips. A trio of middle aged women bounced past him, just barely moving faster than he was, so engaged in conversation that they didn’t even notice him. That’s what Steve had always liked about running early – he could put on a hoodie and jogger’s pants and disappear. People rarely recognized him like this. Most people barely even looked at him (or anyone else), far too wrapped up in their music, their early morning call to their mother, their moving business meeting, their own lives. Steve liked to people watch here, imagine for a moment that he was living their lives, that there was nothing more complicated about his day than what he was going to have for dinner.

The women’s voices faded behind him. Two young men passed, one after the other, followed by a young girl on a bike. Steve leaned on the fence and stared after them, for the first time in a very long time wanting someone to notice him. He felt invisible in a sick, sinking way, not even sure that he was alive out here in the real world. How could he know that he wasn’t stuck in a dark cell that smelled of waste and old water, dreaming desperately that he was along the river on a cool New York morning, Tony waiting for him, warm in bed? He shuddered and turned around to lean his elbows on the red handrail.

He didn’t know what to do with Tony. It had been a month. Tony never pushed him away, exactly, but he found ways of keeping Steve at a distance. Steve wasn’t sure if Tony was more worried about Steve’s allegedly dubious post-captivity decision making, or himself. He knew, down to the marrow of his bones, he knew that his and Tony’s relationship had always been something other than friends. Maybe hadn’t always been something _more_ than friends, but they’d never been just that. He knew that in the last several years, they’d been teetering on the brink of metamorphosis.

He knew that he loved Tony. He just wasn’t sure that what Tony felt was the same. Or if it was just too muddied by Steve’s bad timing for Tony to know what he felt. Steve ran a hand roughly through his hair, thoughts running along a cyclical path. The torrent of questions felt calmer in the morning sunlight and Steve took a deep breath. It had only been a month. They’d had years before this, and they had a lifetime to go. 

The team was going to be worried about him. Steve had instructed Jarvis to tell them where he was if they asked, and he knew Tony could find him in a hot second through his cellphone if needed. Still, they would be worried when they asked Jarvis how long Steve’s had been gone, and the answer was over four hours. He pushed away from the rail and nearly ran into an older man walking on the path with a woman about the same age. Steve danced out of the way, describing a neat circle around the couple to displace the momentum.

“Fancy footwork, there, sonny!” the man said, pointing his cane at Steve’s chest. “You a football player or somethin’?”

Steve beamed at him. “Or something,” he said after a moment, and then lifted his hand in a wave and started back toward home.

“I think that was Captain America, dear,” the woman said in a tone that suggested she’d meant to whisper, though she’d nearly shouted.

“I _know_ that, Myrtle!” the man huffed. They fell into an argument that sounded comfortable, though Steve lost the train of it as soon as he turned back for the street.

~*~

Morning traffic was in full swing by the time he made it back to the Tower. He wasn’t able to run the last ten blocks, the sidewalks were so full of people, but he was still out of breath when he finally pushed past security to the Avengers’ private elevator. He leaned against the wall, taking slow, deliberate breaths while the elevator dinged up closer to the Avengers’ floor. Too many people, too much chaos. Pushing through the throngs of bodies, he had felt horribly out of place, a pretender shoving through them, a ghost of an era that none of them had been alive to witness. He hadn’t felt so out of place since his headlong run into Times Square after waking up in a fake hospital room.

He lifted the hem of his shirt and wiped at his forehead, sopping up a sheen of sweat and hiding the burning heat building behind his eyes. The elevator jerked to a stop between floors.

“Apologies, Captain Rogers,” Jarvis said after a moment, “The elevator is experiencing a brief technical issue. You will be arriving at the Avengers’ common room in approximately sixty seconds.”

Steve stifled what he could feel would be a hysterical laugh. He shifted to a dry patch of t-shirt and pressed it hard into the inside corners of his eyes. By the time he’d dropped the shirt and sucked in another breath, the elevator had started moving.

“Thanks, Jarvis,” he said quietly.

“Repairing technical issues is my job, as it were,” Jarvis replied implacably. “Nevertheless, you are welcome.”

The elevator door _ping_ ed open and Steve made a beeline for his bedroom. He didn’t encounter anyone in the hall, but it was after nine and most of the Avengers would have been up hours before. Tony might still be in bed – he’d been up late for a teleconference with investors in Australia – but his room was one floor up. Steve took a cold shower to drive away the sticky sweat, and then stood in front of the mirror and stared himself down for a good minute and a half, not sure he exactly recognized his own reflection. There was something off about it, something a little more careworn, a little more _frightened_ than he’d seen in a long time.

Jerking his eyes away from the mirror, he shaved quickly and pulled on fresh clothing.

~*~

Clint was seated at the breakfast table with a thick stack of paperwork that he was filling out in purple gel pen between giant spoonfuls of Lucky Charms. Steve hesitated in the entryway, but forged on. He was finding it strangely difficult to be alone with anyone other than Tony, though a different kind of difficult than being in the crowd had been. Being alone with Tony was a problem for different reasons, but they were working on those. Or at least, Steve was working on them, and Tony was doing his best to give him space when he needed it. It was a mess, but it was getting easier.

He cast a glance around the room, but it was otherwise empty. It made him antsy and he didn’t know why. He was sure that his teammates had noticed how uncomfortable he was around them, and that made him feel both frustrated and ashamed; these were his friends, and they’d rescued him. He shouldn’t feel like he was failing a test every time he didn’t know what to say when he was alone with one of them. He made himself smile as he passed Clint to the kitchen, and Clint smiled back at him like it wasn’t strange at all.

As Steve opened the refrigerator, he realized that it was the first time since coming home that he would be making his own breakfast. For the first two weeks, Bruce had hovered around him at meal times like a mother hen, and showed up every few hours to make sure he was getting electrolytes. After Steve had told Bruce that he was past the point of fine and didn’t need to be babied, he’d ended up eating whatever leftovers were available from someone else’s meal.

As he pulled out ingredients for a fruit parfait, he idly wondered at the convenience of leftovers constantly being available when everyone in the tower usually ate like starving wolves. He huffed out a laugh. Across the room, Clint shifted minutely, his head turning so Steve had his good ear (or, as Clint liked to say, his ‘gooder’ ear, because everything about him was good, baby).

“Thank you,” Steve said impulsively. “You’ve all been taking good care of me.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clint responded airily, but he was smiling, relaxed for the first time since Steve had gotten home. Maybe that was what the strangeness was – maybe it wasn’t that Steve was suddenly unable to handle his teammates so much as his teammates hadn’t known how to handle him. Maybe it was a combination of the two. Of both of the Avenger teams, Steve had been the only one who’d never been in captivity of some kind before the trailer park base. At least he’d finally joined the club.

“I think it’s time I get back on a training schedule,” Steve said, dumping sliced strawberries in the cup and adding a scoop of vanilla yogurt. “I’ve kind of lost track of the days. Are we on a rotation right now?” He pulled a pair of kiwifruits over and started slicing the fuzzy skin off.

Clint nodded, chewing on a giant bite of Lucky Charms, and held up one finger while he clicked through his phone. “We should be on the star rotation now, but Sam was called out for that bug thing in Hell’s Kitchen. Natasha and Rhodey are both home. We could do some ricochet drills, or strap on some simsuits and have some fun?”

Smiling at Clint’s hopeful expression, Steve nodded. “Sounds good. Can you see if they can make it?” He put more yogurt on top of the kiwi, and followed it with thick slices of banana. He popped one end of the cut banana in his mouth and made a face.  

“Something wrong?” Clint asked. He had his phone up in front of his face; rather than move the phone so he could make eye contact, he peered around it.

“This banana tastes weird.” He threw the other end over the breakfast bar and Clint leaned to the side to catch it in his mouth.

“Tastes fine to me,” he said, following it with another bite of cereal. Steve finally realized that he was using a serving spoon, and was almost impressed that he managed to get it in his mouth. Then again, Steve once saw Clint eating macaroni and cheese with a shovel made of a slice of pizza. “But I have the palate of a two hundred pound hog according to Nat,” Clint concluded with an unconcerned shrug.

Steve shook his head, grinning, but he usually had the same palate – he liked good food, and he loved all the variety, but he’d grown up eating whatever they could get their hands on. He wasn’t usually picky, even if bananas tasted different than they had when he was a kid. He scooped a slice of banana out of the glass and chewed through it, but it still tasted weird to him, too sweet. Shrugging, he added a last layer of yogurt and topped it off with a generous scoop of Bruce’s protein grain mix – oats, chia seeds, almond slices, Grapenuts, and only Bruce knew what else. He’d already chopped the banana up, so he would just have to deal with it.

“Nat says okay, and Rhodey is only free until one, so we better get in the training room if you want to go for it,” Clint reported, tipping his head back so he could talk through a full mouth without anything escaping.

Shoving a long-handled spoon into the glass, Steve started cleaning up his work area. He entertained a brief image of his mother at the table with Clint and exactly how well that would play out. Not well for Clint, probably. “Let me finish my yogurt, and then I’ll grab a few protein bars and meet you there.”

Clint picked up his mixing bowl and sucked down what looked like a good half gallon of milk, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and said, “Sure thing, Cap.” He still had a milk mustache highlighting the start of a real mustache, but Steve helpfully said nothing and let him clean up his bowl and walk out of the room with it, purple gel pen behind his ear and stack of papers haphazardly stuffed under one arm.

~*~

The obstacle room was set up with sensors, and their weapons were rigged with lasers to reduce collateral damage to the tower. Steve crouched behind an irregularly shaped metal block and made himself small behind the shield.  He listened carefully for any sounds of motion – Tony had rigged the room to either be a cacophony of noise, or utterly silent. They’d set it to silent for the exercise, and it was the kind of quiet that made his own heartbeat sound loud. Steve could hear every creak of the shield’s leather strap, the squeak of his boots shifting on the tile. He could hear the brief shuffle of movement as Natasha or Clint changed positions, even thought he’d caught the gentle ghost of Clint’s breath.

A spatter of noise pinged off a rock to his left and Steve’s head twitched automatically to follow it. He counted it off – one-two-three – and then leapt, shield up. An arrow skittered off the shield, and then he twisted, trying to catch Natasha’s attack. The sting slipped under his guard and he yelped as it hit his side, but let the shield go as he landed. Clint took the edge of it to the gut and went flying backwards, which gave him a little breathing room, but no protection against Natasha as he hit the floor and rolled. She flipped over her cover and Steve barely caught her leg as her heel descended toward his chest. She jerked her leg back and then drove it forward again, sinking her foot into his ribs. Steve rolled with it, taking her down with him, and then rolled again to avoid Clint, leaping back into action with Steve’s shield held confidently in his right hand.

“Anytime now, Rhodey!” Steve called, throwing Natasha into Clint, who did not stumble like he’d been hoping but dropped to one knee so that Natasha hit the shield with her feet and bounced off, flipping to land on a nearby boulder. “Come on,” Steve complained, “That’s my move.”

“I look better doing it,” Clint told him with a saucy wink as Steve turned to meet Natasha-the-human-missile. He caught her hand-to-hand and tucked backwards, kicking her off over his head.

He flipped up to his feet and Clint made the bad decision to throw the shield at him. He did it very well, and maybe if he’d been fighting anyone _except_ Steve it would have been a good hit. Steve twisted to catch the shield, brought it into his chest and flung it back. It hit the nearest barrier, knocked Clint’s hastily drawn bow aside, ricocheted off the floor, and ended up back in Steve’s hand.

“You gave it back to him?” Natasha demanded in a snarl, even as they ducked back around cover.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Clint defended in a harsh whisper, definitely whining.

Relative silence fell as the three of them crept apart again, though Steve could still hear Natasha giving Clint a quiet, though thorough dressing down in Russian. He smiled despite himself and moved further away from them, looking for his missing partner. It wasn’t like Rhodey to sit out, and it was hard to keep the War Machine armor quiet. As if on cue, he heard the whine of Rhodey’ armor powering up across the room and the clamorous result of him engaging with Natasha and Clint.

“Damnit, Rhodey.” Steve jumped out of cover and raced toward all the noise, nearly jumping out of his skin when Rhodey appeared at his left like a ghost, falling into step beside him. In the far left corner, the War Machine armor rose above the obstacles and fired a laser meant to simulate his repulsors. Clint made a sharp noise when his simsuit gave him a light shock for feedback.

“Nice,” Steve praised under his breath. “Maybe some heads up next time?”

“You were busy.” Rhodey shrugged and gave him a sidelong look. “Maybe we should be on comms next time?”

“What fun would that be?” Steve grinned at him and they moved around the truck-sized boulder between them and the other team. Clint had his back to the boulder and spun in a lightning fast movement to fire the padded arrow at him from a distance of five feet. Steve ducked behind the shield, but the arrow smacked hard into his thigh. The simsuit gave him a sharp buzz of electricity for his mistake, and the arrow adhered to the rough surface of his suit, encumbering his movement. He drove forward with the shield, favoring his still-tingling leg. He hit the archer in the chest, shoving him back against the boulder. A dozen feet away, Rhodey and his armor had Natasha pinned down in a shallow crevice.

He must have taken his eyes off Clint for a quarter second too long, because there was a sudden jolt of electricity in his side, just below his ribcage. The whole suit lit up with three brief flashes of electricity, lights set in the chest and arms turning dark amber. Clint pulled the flickering blade of the holographic knife back, covered in holographic blood _for verisimilitude, Cap, it’s important!_

“Damnit,” he swore.

“Sorry, Cap.” Clint winked at him, sliding out from between the shield and the rock face. Steve had thirteen minutes before his suit turned yellow again, and five more before he was green, so there was nothing he could do as Clint wrestled the shield out of his hand and bounded cheerfully off to help Natasha. He tapped his toes angrily inside his boot while he watched Rhodey turn to face the new threat, War Machine staying firmly on target, but Steve knew she would be a match for the suit’s AI.

It was no comfort that the hit on anyone else but Thor would have been an instant red light, because thirteen minutes out of the game might as well have _been_ a red light. Rhodey’s simsuit was glowing red inside ten minutes, though War Machine got Clint first, and then turned Natasha’s left leg yellow by the time Steve was able to move. She wasn’t deterred by the immobilized knee and had him in a chokehold within ten seconds of him getting free.

“You’re off your game today, Cap,” she observed, her knees tucked up under his arms, heels digging into his hips, elbow curled around his throat. “Wanna tap out?”

“Never,” Steve gasped out through the pressure around his throat. He reached down, yanked Clint’s arrow off his left thigh, and aimed it blindly for her back. He felt the buzz of her suit against his neck and she let go with a snarl, dropping to the floor.

“Blue team wins,” Jarvis announced, and then apparently couldn’t help himself from adding, “Barely.”

The lights on the simsuits flipped off so Clint, Natasha, and Rhodey could climb to their feet and shake their limbs out. Steve gave his left leg a hard shake and crossed over to Rhodey. War Machine landed in between them and stood in the rest position, waiting for orders from his pilot. Steve moved around the armor, shoulders tense and stomach twisted up in knots.

“Don’t give me the puppy eyes, Cap, I’m not Tony. You were off in the clouds there for a few minutes.” Rhodey gestured to his head with a flick of his fingers.

Steve nodded, breathing around the uncomfortable jolt in his chest, conscious of how fast his heart was beating. He couldn’t stop his eyes from roaming over Rhodey’s body, even knowing that he hadn’t really been injured. “If this actually were combat, you would have bled out by the time I’d healed enough from the wound to help you.”

“That’s about the long and short of it,” Rhodey said, but then consoled, “Usually we’re not up against Clint and Natasha, and I probably could have gotten into the suit if I hadn’t waited so long. We all made some pretty big mistakes.”

“But it was one heck of a show!” Jan seemed to pop into existence on top of one of the boulders laying on her stomach with her chin cradled in her hands, elbows propped on the rock. She gave Rhodey a big smile. “Watching Nat kick your ass is going to make me happy for the rest of the week. I recorded it.”

“Joy,” Rhodey replied darkly, which only made Jan’s smile all the more sunny. Steve drifted back to watch them – Rhodey was being more forgiving in drills that usual, and Steve wasn’t having as much trouble as usual keeping his mouth shut and letting Rhodey critique. He felt like an interloper, a visitor there to learn and observe. He’d built the training program, it didn’t make sense for him to feel that way.  

“Don’t guess you could have just helped out?” Clint asked, tossing a rock at Jan.

She popped down to wasp size to avoid the rock, and then was back to her full size, leaning on Clint’s shoulder. “What kind of fun would that be?” she asked, kissing his cheek. Dancing away from Clint’s side, she hiked an eyebrow at Steve. “Coming?”

Giving her a sideways glance and stealing himself against a wave of anxiety, he asked, “Where?”

“VA Fundraiser? You promised you’d go with me, and you need a serious shower and wardrobe change before I’m taking you anywhere.” She made a production of holding her nose with one hand and waving the other in front of her face for effect.

Steve had made that promise almost eight months before being captured. He’d forgotten, and suddenly wasn’t sure if he was ready to be in public after the morning run. He’d unconsciously started moving backwards and didn’t notice until he had to sway around War Machine’s arm. For an hour he’d felt normal, but now here he was putting War Machine in between himself and a teammate – _Jan_ – as if she might be a threat. She didn’t show any signs of having noticed and her expression was open without a trace of judgment. More than any of the others, Jan hadn’t started treating him like he was fragile. She was just as kind, just as energetic, and just as playful as she’d always been. He appreciated it, and he didn’t want to let her down. She would let him out of it at a single word, but he couldn’t help feeling that if he backed out of this engagement, he would back out of the next, and the one after that. He’d never liked any of the public engagements, but if he let himself make an excuse to get out of this one, he might never leave the tower again.

That was unacceptable; he was still Captain America. He was still an Avenger, still a leader of an Avenger team. He didn’t get to hide. He straightened his shoulders and nodded decisively.

“Don’t look so enthused,” Jan teased, reaching out to draw him away from the safety of War Machine’s shadow, “Or I might just have to start taking you to more of these parties!”

~*~

He couldn’t tell if the tux felt too big or too small. He was simultaneously swimming in the sleeves and struggling to breathe around the collar. Jan had wrapped both of her hands around his right wrist somewhere around the tenth time he’d tried to tug the collar open, and she dug her nails into his palm whenever the left hand crept up. The cuffs were annoyingly loose around wrists, the starched edges dug uncomfortably into his skin, and he always forgot how much he hated cufflinks until he had to wear them.

The car pulled up to the curb and Steve threw himself out of it like he needed to duck bullets. The convention hall was aglow with high powered yellow lights aimed up at the façade to both give it a sense of grandeur and soften the edges where it was obviously in need of attention. It must have been a grand old building in its heyday and was still prestigious enough to draw a wealthy crowd, but it had also obviously weathered a few storms. Steve felt a sort of kinship staring up at the narrow windows and the elongated shadows.

Jan slid gracefully out of the seat behind him, and he just barely managed to hold a hand out to her before she was on her feet. She was resplendent in a golden gown that hugged her curves, the black ‘X’ that crossed in the front and wound around her back highlighting all the right details. Steve felt even more awkward in his midnight blue-almost-black monkey suit standing next to her in all of her elegant glory. She really should have brought Tony or Natasha.

“I know you hate these monkey shows,” Jan said to him, slipping her hand around his elbow and beaming as he automatically bent his arm to make a comfortable hold, “But it’s a good cause. Just give me three hours at least. Five would be better, but I’ll make due with three.”

Steve knew that he would stay with her until she left, and she knew that too. What she meant was three hours of engagement, of smiling at the right times, shaking hands, nodding along to conversations, pretending that he wasn’t annoyed when he was asked again what was his favorite part of the ‘future,’ and overall pretending like he was comfortable in the shark pond.

“I’ll do my best,” Steve promised, feeling his spine straighten. As long as he treated it like a mission, he could manage it. Natasha had been trying to teach him how to be subtle for years. It was good practice.

A soft giggle drew his attention down to see Jan hiding her mouth behind her hand, eyes sparkling. “You do hate this so much,” she observed finally. “I’m sorry, Steve. You know you don’t really have to come, threats of bodily harm and a lemon yellow wardrobe aside.”

They came to the bottom of the wide steps and started climbing, camera flashes going off all around them. “We all put in our time at the public events. It’s not like I don’t understand. You _do_ remember that I used to do this for a living?”

“Sure,” Jan said. Neither of them mentioned that it was before Europe, Hydra, an alien invasion or three, and a lot more time spent making messes than schmoozing the rich and powerful out of their cash. It was almost hard to picture himself on the USO stage, in front of the camera, standing in the center of opera halls and lavish private dining halls, reminding those who’d had enough money to ride through the depression that there were boys on the front lines who needed their support. He knew he’d done those things, but they felt so distant when stacked up against riding into a Hydra base on a motorcycle and leaving it a smoking ruin behind him.

“If it’s too much –”

“It’s fine!” Steve snapped, his voice coming out frustrated and sharp. Jan’s hand tightened on his arm, but she didn’t betray any hurt or nerves on her face. “I’m sorry,” Steve said immediately, lowering his voice. “But it really is fine. I can handle myself, and I know my limits. If I didn’t think I was prepared to handle it, I wouldn’t have come.”

Jan gave him a smile that probably seemed sad only to him. They both knew he wasn’t being precisely honest, and Steve abruptly remembered Bucky in uniform, cover tipped roguishly to one side, saying _right, like you don’t have anything to prove_. Steve drew in a breath and let it out, pausing to smile for a photographer who stepped out in front of them. Jan leaned in against him, smiling and beautiful and perfect. The photographer snapped a dozen photos, and then another one was shouting for their attention and lights were everywhere. Microphones appeared in front of their faces; Jan diverted attention and answered most of the questions, leaving just the easy ones for Steve. Give ‘em that good ol’ USO grin, Rogers, sell some bonds.

They finally made it through the press into the main doors, and through the entryway to the convention hall. Tables were set up around a dance floor, the room decked in blue and white streamers, red roses in the corners and on tables. It was almost too much, but it was tasteful in its extravagant way. People were clustered around the room, drifting in and out of groups, moving through the dance floor like they really wanted to use it but social niceties said it was too early.

“Would I be barking up the wrong tree if I asked you to dance?” Jan asked, giving him a crooked smile and a wink.

“Only if you want me stepping on your toes again.”

“Come on,” Jan said, giving him a tug, “The last lesson you only stepped on me once. I’m light on my feet, I can move out of the way.”

Steve opened his mouth to say _not this time_ , but closed it. He’d let go of that stubborn insistence not to dance when Peggy died, and it seemed like a useless line to hold just for the sake of holding. He let his breath out and gave Jan a smile. “Why not?”

Jan led him onto the dance floor more than the other way around. She turned herself in a broad arc and ended up with one hand on his shoulder, the other resting lightly in his palm. She was a tiny thing, and even in her heels, she only came up to his shoulder. It felt strange holding her when his hand nearly spanned her waist. She gave him a gentle tug, he stepped forward on cue, she stepped back. They moved like that, easing around the groups of guests who’d wandered onto the floor. Steve kept up with her, paid very close attention to how she was shifting her weight and where her feet were. _It’s like fighting_ , she’d told him after their first lesson had ended in disaster. It was close enough to make it click for him, and he was fine as long as he took it on like an assignment.

Another couple finally joined them, and then others. By their slightly scandalized expressions, Steve guessed that they were throwing things out of order, but he was glad that Jan had taken that step. He would have been a mess if she’d started leading him around for small talk, or they’d ended up sitting at a table, waiting for things to start. He always felt better when he was in motion.

Idly, he wondered what it would be like to dance with Tony, and if that was something Tony would do with him in public. Were they going public? Steve didn’t really like the idea of hiding it, but all those reasons that he’d waited to say something were still in play. He also hated the tabloids digging into his business, and would be just fine going a lifetime or three without his and Tony’s pictures splayed across the gossip rags’ covers. _Who wears the superhero spandex in_ this _relationship? The answer will shock you!_

Steve viciously bit down the grin that threatened to steal across his face. He could imagine the other headlines would be worse. God forbid they were ever photographed in anything that looked like a fight – considering how often they _did_ fight, the tabloids probably had a few dozen of those stuffed in a file for later use. He wondered if they would go so far as to suggest he’d broken Tony and Pepper’s home, or how long it would take for them to start speculating on which of them was cheating with which of their teammates. Not that they didn’t do that anyway. He’d stopped keeping track, but he was pretty sure he’d been involved with every woman he’d ever set eyes on according to the media. He and Jan had featured prominently on the magazine covers for almost three months – she still had one of them framed on the wall with the headline _Size Matters_.

“You look like you’re trying to chew nails,” Jan observed.  

Steve shook himself out of his own head and gave her a smile. “Sorry. Just thinking.”

Snorting, she said, “I could tell by the painful look on your face.”

Before Steve could answer, a friendly voice intruded, “Mind if I cut in?”

Steve could have wept with relief to find Sam’s grinning face behind him. “I thought you were dealing with that bug thing?”

“Dealt with and done hours ago, what do I look like to you? Barton?” He slid into Steve’s personal space, smoothly falling into step with them to snag Jan’s hand. For three steps, they moved in synch, Steve automatically adjusting to the way Sam’s body fit in his space, and then Sam took a turn and pulled a laughing Jan with him, smoothly depositing Steve at the edge of the dance floor and whisking her away.

“Going to let him just steal your date?”

Steve turned to give the newcomer his best glare, but found Tony grinning at him, somehow looking comfortable and casual in a three piece suit set off by a scarlet tie and the flash of tiny Iron Man helmets at his cuffs.

“But he _does_ have style,” Tony finished in his worst impersonation of a Texan accent. Steve groaned and covered his face with one hand, embarrassed on Tony’s behalf. Tony’s grin was beautiful and unrepentant, and the very sight of him smiling and relaxed made Steve forget everyone else in the room. It had been a long time since he’d seen Tony so _happy_ in public, the stress lines between his eyes smoothed out and replaced by deep smile lines at the corners.

“What are you doing here? I thought you had a thing.”

Tony feigned hurt. “It almost sounds like you’re not happy to see me! I do have a thing,” he said, and then made a broad gesture around the room. “It’s very thing-like. Someone threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t show, and I’m not going to suggest that the person in question might also have a metal suit of armor, but he definitely does. All I’m saying is that bodily harm is a real possibility.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Steve interrupted before Tony could really get his feet under him. The building ramble stopped and Tony gave him a smile that was both shy and charming.

“So, are we going to stand here all night, or are we going to give Wilson and Jan a run for their money?” He held a hand out, palm up, no expectation, just an offer. Steve thought about all those tabloid headlines, caught the flash of a camera out of the corner of his eye, and guessed that there was going to be a tabloid headline whether they danced or not. Steve set his hand in Tony’s and tugged him onto the floor.

“Are you leading or am I leading?” Tony babbled, looking down at their feet while they stumbled a half circle around the center of the floor, “Because it feels like you’re leading, but our hands are backwards.”

“Improvise,” Steve suggested, dragging him forward again. Tony stumbled into him and sputtered out a laugh, but he fell into step and they just clicked together. Steve didn’t have to pay attention to how Tony was shifting his weight, or where he was moving his feet, he just knew. Tony reversed their hands after a minute and took lead. They made several turns around the room, switching lead easily as they moved around the floor. They bumped into Sam and Jan in the middle of the floor and Steve pivoted, feeling Tony move around him. He snagged Sam away from Jan, and listened to her laughter as she spun into Tony’s chest.

“Look at you getting creative, alright,” Sam said, with a grin breaking over his face. He jerked one way when Steve tried to pull him the other way. “Oh, no, I’m leading.”

“Doesn’t feel like you’re leading,” Steve replied. “Feels like I’m pulling you all over the floor right now.”

“Is that what it feels like? Ok.” Sam stopped abruptly. Steve shifted around him with a startled noise, and Sam took his momentum and turned it into a whirl before pulling him back. “You’re not the only one who’s creative, Rogers.”

Steve was contemplating just picking Sam up, when a tapping sound broke over their speakers. “Glad we’re having so much fun,” The MC said, “If we could all start moving toward the tables, we’ll have even more fun!”

“We’ll pick this up later,” Sam said sagely, stepping away from him. He clapped Steve on the shoulder and quietly added, “Really good to see you smile, man.”

Steve almost hadn’t realized he was smiling. For a few minutes, he’d forgotten that he had any reason _not_ to smile. The smile slid away, but Tony cut across their path, still twirling Jan, and it crept slowly back into place. He felt Sam’s attention next to him, but his friend didn’t say anything else as he prodded Steve toward their table.

~*~

Running back to the Tower the next morning, Steve stopped at a street news vendor. Tony had told him early into the Avengers Initiative not to read the tabloids, not to even glance at the covers, not to seek out pictures of himself. He’d said that the photographs would never be accurate, and the tabloids were always out to skew a story into a negative slant. When they were selling well, they would be retouched to look perfect. When the goodwill started to fade, they would be caught at awkward angles, awkward moments, filtered to change skin tone, every stray expression explained in a sweeping narrative. He hadn’t said it very nicely, but it had been good advice that Steve tried to follow. Being a glutton for punishment, he usually failed. He did manage to restrict himself to one randomly selected tabloid and the Times. The cashier gave him a long look from over his square-framed glasses, but restrained himself to a grunt as he handed Steve’s change over and turned back to his own paper.

The headline read _Dancing with Superheroes! Who has the Wasp caught in her nest?_ Steve hiked an eyebrow at the spread of images– Jan giving him a conspiratorial smile in one, laughing with Sam’s arms around her in another, and her hand shoving playfully at Tony’s grinning face in a third. It wasn’t flattering, and Steve didn’t like the implication. When he opened the magazine to page 21, he found background pictures of Sam cutting in on his and Jan’s dance, the three of them caught in a circle with Sam’s arm wrapped around Jan’s waist, his hand on Steve’s shoulder. Another background picture was Steve and Tony fighting for the lead, and the caption underneath was _Infamous playboy Tony Stark has his hands full with hunky Captain America_.

It was always that way: Tony Stark and Captain America. Steve wasn’t a person to them, and Tony wasn’t a hero. It was a silly picture and Steve hated the caption, but Tony looked so open and sweet, and Steve looked relaxed, and it was… nice.

“Jarvis?” Steve asked guiltily, looking around even though he was in his own room with the door closed.

“Yes, Captain Rogers?”

“Can you…” he hesitated, looking down at the picture and trying not to read any of the words. His finger automatically smoothed over the glassy page, drifting down the curve of Tony’s strong back.

“Would you like a copy of a photograph, Captain?” Jarvis prompted.

Steve flushed, but he nodded and held up the magazine up with his finger on the picture. He didn’t doubt that Jarvis already knew the picture he had in mind, but the AI at least gave him the benefit of putting the photograph on his tablet and asking for confirmation.

“I will adjust the resolution and have it printed for you.”

Cheeks still warm, Steve said, “Thank you.”

“Of course, Captain. May I also take this opportunity to remind you of your one-thirty appointment with Doctor Sampson? With current traffic, it should take forty-five minutes to reach her office.”

The pleasant glow of finding the photograph vanished and Steve set the magazine aside. He leaned forward to set his elbows on his knees and buried his face between his hands. The counselor was just a formality, she just had to clear him for duty. She was the same counselor he’d seen after the Invasion and checked in with twice a year. She’d worked with Clint extensively after he was broken free of Loki’s control. He knew that what he said to her was as secure as any conversation with a counselor could be, under the circumstances. It still felt like he was being put under a microscope, picked apart, accused of something he hadn’t done every time he walked into her office.

“Would you like me to reschedule the appointment, Captain?” Jarvis asked gently.

Steve almost said yes. He _was_ busy, he needed to be in the training rotation, he had three months of reports to catch up on, he wanted to spend some time with Sam and Jan when they got off duty. It would be an easy excuse, and not even a lie. It just also wasn’t the truth, and Steve wasn’t a coward.

“No,” he said regretfully, standing and stripping out of his sweat soaked t-shirt. He drew in a deep breath and let it go just to feel the air expanding his lungs. His voice sounded grim even to his own ears when he finished, “No, I’ll go.”


	5. Five

Chapter Five

The chairs were never comfortable. Tony shifted sideways in his, brushing his shoulder against Steve’s bicep. He gave Tony a warm smile and moved in the seat so their knees nudged together, and then turned back to Clint. Tony slid a hand under the tablecloth and rested it lightly on Steve’s thigh. The stage was elevated above the crowd and the angle was right that no one would notice. Most likely. And if someone did? Steve hadn’t seemed to mind dancing in public. A simple gesture of affection getting into the press shouldn’t cause too much of a stir. Sure. He moved his hand away, but Steve reached over and caught his wrist before he could get too far. He pulled Tony’s hand back into his lap at a far less camouflaged angle. Tony wasn’t going to say it made butterflies swarm up under his ribcage, but there was definitely a fluttery sort of sensation along his sternum. Just vibrations from the reactor.

They’d been set out at a long folding table with a simple blue cloth spread over the top, bottles of water at each place. Tony and Bruce were the only ones in civilian clothing, and Tony had the suitcase suit at his feet. Bruce was settling into a long lecture about plastic waste that Tony knew by heart, but the young intern he was lecturing obviously just wanted to be left alone with her Starbucks cup and her cellphone. The crowd was getting restless below them – they’d been brought out early and then technical difficulties with the microphones had turned what was supposed to be a press conference into a zoo. Tony was used to being stared at, and dismissing the intense focus of the crowd was easy. Steve and Jan both had the experience not to be bothered, but Clint’s leg was bouncing under the table, making the whole thing shudder.

“This crowd is going to turn into a mob soon if they don’t fix this issue,” Jan whispered, leaning over Tony’s shoulder. She saw Tony’s hand in Steve’s lap and gave him a pointed look, nudging him in a full body leer.

“What I don’t understand,” Tony replied without responding to her little jostle, “Is how they have _me_ sitting right in front of them, but _oh, no, Mr. Stark, just sit tight_. _Be fixed in a jiffy_!” He retrieved his hand long enough to snap his fingers in illustration, and then willingly surrendered it again when Steve reached for him. Steve’s thumb drifted over his wrist in a distracted circle, making Tony smile and Jan roll her eyes.

“When did _just sit tight, Mr. Stark_ ever stop you from doing anything?” Jan hiked her eyebrow at him, “You just wanted a few minutes to snuggle with love muffin over there and a perfectly good excuse to not move.”

It had been a long time since Tony had blushed, but his cheeks felt warm under Jan’s knowing gaze. She gave him a smirk and a sage nod. Tony cleared his throat, eased his phone of his pocket without giving up Steve’s warm grip. He gave the phone a quick shake to wake Jarvis up, and held it up to his mouth.

“Mic mode, J. Give me the PA system.”

“Done, sir,” Jarvis said after a brief delay that was mostly for show. The display turned blue, a red light blinking in the corner, “The mic is active.”

“Okay, hi everyone, hello,” Tony said, grinning across the crowd. Excited applause broke out over the audience, allowing Bruce’s captive intern to escape, and interrupting Steve and Clint’s conversation. Tony waved the phone at them since Steve didn’t seem ready to let go of his hand any time soon. “Guess we should just get a move on before Bruce misses lunch, right?”

At the end of the table, Bruce said, “I do have a very specific meal schedule.” He nodded and gave the crowd his signature two parts shy, two parts sweet, one part self-depreciating, and all around charming smile. A ripple of laughter went around the room, immediately removing Bruce from the threat zone and into the harmless scientist zone. The man was a peach, seriously, a great big, sometimes-green, scientific peach. Tony’s favorite kind of fruit.

Tony handed the phone over the Jan, who scooped it up gleefully in both hands and stood to wave to the crowd with an enthusiastic greeting. A great wave of buzzing filled the room as Jan’s numerous fans hummed what had become her theme song at some point over the years. She laughed and her wings unfolded from her back, diaphanous and glittering like snow crystals in the sun. They were such a beautiful piece of work and every time Tony saw them he remembered all the times he’d been told he wasn’t an artist unless it involved blood and steel. They couldn’t generate enough lift to get her off the ground at her normal size, but they were lovely all the same. She buzzed her wings twice to the great delight of the audience and blew the crowd a kiss.  

Gesturing for the crowd to quiet down, she said, “We’re excited to announce the Avenger’s Initiative Brighter Tomorrow Foundation and happy you could all join us today. This is a project that is very near and dear to all of the Avengers’ hearts, and it has been a long time in the making. The Foundation’s goal is to foster a healthy, supportive learning environment for the youth who will one day be leaders in their fields. Next week, we break ground on the first Foundation Center facility, right here in Brooklyn. Bet you can’t guess whose idea _that_ was?”

She gave Steve an exaggerated look and the crowd laughed on queue while Steve put his hands up in mock surrender. He returned his grip casually to Tony’s palm, giving him a brief, pleased smile. Tony looked in between them with a fond smile of his own – the two of them together were a sight to behold and Tony wished that he’d been able to get out of going. Not because the Foundation wasn’t as much his love as theirs, but he would have preferred to just watch them sweep the crowd off their collective feet without being there to take any of the attention away from the message.

While the event coordinators were still rushing around behind the scenes, their frantic activity redirected from fixing the microphones to catching up with their guests’ progress. The display screen finally lit up to run the presentation and Jan walked the crowd gracefully through blueprints and models, the free classes that would be offered to the community, outreach projects to local schools, funding for art, music, and science classes. Tony was promised as a guest lecturer once a semester for robotics, and he wasn’t completely sure how he was going to make that work, but he would make it work somehow. Steve was more ambitious with three art classes a semester. All of the Avengers had promised at least one day of their time each season for a class – fashion, archery, self-defense, biology, music. It had really been Steve and Jan’s brainchild, and one of those projects that made Tony grateful for his billions and his connections.

Questions came rapidly after that, filtered through a moderator to keep the audience on track, and Steve kept Tony’s hand pressed into his thigh throughout, thumb running in unconscious circles over his wrist, slipping in under his watch every few passes. It was electric and distracting, and Tony had to ask to have a few questions repeated while Clint rolled his eyes and Bruce hid a smile behind his hand.

“Mr. Stark?” Tony jerked himself out of his own head and gave the speaker a bright smile. She glanced back at the moderator who had approved her question, and then rushed to ask, “Are you holding Captain America’s hand under the table?”

Attention zoomed in on them, and there it went – the story of them playing handsy under the table would overwhelm the story of the Foundation Center in minutes. Steve’s hand tightened on his. Before either of them could speak, Tony’s phone-turned-mic blared the Assemble alarm over the speakers. Four quieter alarms went off under all the clamor while Jan tossed him his phone. The crowd ducked their heads and held their hands over their ears.

“Take it off the mic,” Tony told Jarvis.

The noise stopped, and Steve leaned over slightly to say, “Thanks, Jarvis.”

“While I had considered experiencing sudden technical difficulties,” Jarvis replied, “I’m afraid that I cannot take credit for this one. Cyclops has requested immediate assistance from the nearest Avenger team.”

“And we’re it,” Tony guessed, standing. He waved to the confused crowd. “Sorry, folks! Duty calls!”

Kicking the suitcase suit over, Tony toed it open and leaned over to trust his hands into the gauntlets. A cheer went up, and he winked for the cameras as the suit folded around him. Steve already had his shield in hand, and with another jauntily blown kiss, Jan shrank down to wasp size.

“Mind if I catch a ride, Tin Man?” she asked, alighting on his shoulder.

“Anytime, Powder Puff. Hang on.” Jarvis helpfully opened a small panel in his shoulder. Jan slid into the shelter he’d built in just for her and strapped into the miniature chair. “Wasp and I will fly ahead. Think you can catch up?”

Clint snorted. “We’ll wait for you when we land,” he promised, sticking his tongue out. They split up, Steve running for the jet with Clint and Bruce on his heels, Tony firing the jet boots to fly over the crowd, aiming for the door being helpfully held open by security.

“Get me on the line with Scotty McFireeyes.”

“Shall I ask for Scotty McFireeyes specifically, sir?” Jarvis asked dryly.

Tony grinned. “Please do.”

“Stark,” Scott greeted, sounding like he was chewing through glass to get Tony’s name out. “So glad you’ll be joining us. Rhodes wasn’t available?”

“Oh, he was,” Tony lied, “But I know how much you really look forward to working with me, so I dropped everything and rushed over.”

“How thoughtful,” Scott drawled.

“Go ahead, you can admit it. You have a crush on me. Hero worship is okay, Scott. I understand.” Tony banked around a building, startling a pair of crows into flight.

Jarvis helpful piped in their shrill caws as they scolded him, and Jan translated for his benefit, “Even the birds think you’re annoying today, Tony.”

The crows tried to give chase, but Tony outdistanced them in seconds, leaving them to plot in his wake. Soon enough, he was sure the city’s entire population of crows would have it out for him.

“You’ve found me out,” Scott admitted in a dull, even voice. Tony was surprised he couldn’t hear the distinctive whine of Scott’s laser slagging something metal. He sent Scott a dozen or more autographed mini Iron Man figurines every a year. They probably got used for target practice in situations just like this one, but Tony also privately entertained the notion that Scott might have five dozen mini Iron Man figurines secretly stashed in his closet along with the comic books.

“Now that we’ve gotten the heart-to-heart out of the way, mind filling me in on what I’m flying into?” 

Scott’s tone changed immediately, slipping into commander-mode like Steve’s did when he put on the uniform. “Rogue, Wolverine and I are parked outside a farmhouse. We’ve been tracking a gang with more technology than morals the past month, and we think we’ve found their home base. Unfortunately, it looks like they’ve got some kind of doomsday weapon in the barn. Your guys are closer than our guys.”

“And Hank is in Romania right now,” Tony finished for him.

There was a moment of glowering silence, but Scott confirmed, “And Hank is in Romania right now.”

“So… you need me.” Tony grinned so hard his cheeks hurt.

“I do _not_ need you,” Scott hissed back. Logan and Rogue could be heard in the background, laughing quietly. “You know what? Go back home, Stark. I’ll call Richards.”

“Richards is in Romania with Hank,” Tony said smugly. “You’re stuck with me. Come on, say that you need me.”

“Go to hell.”

“You _neeeeeed_ me,” Tony sing-songed, “You need me so bad, Summers. Just for this, you’re getting a special, limited edition, signed Mark VIII figurine. You know, they only made twelve of those bad boys.” Tony put on a burst of speed, following the ping of the X-Men’s location.

“Do _not –”_

“–Lucky you,” Tony finished over him, swooping low to the ground so he didn’t give away their position on his way in. He let Jarvis take over for tree-dodging and then landed as quietly at Summers’ side as a hundred and twelve pounds of gold-titanium alloy with a hundred and seventy pounds of him inside could manage. The Quinjet was seconds behind him, cloaked and already setting down in an empty field. Tony snapped a still of Cyclops’ scowling face and then flipped the faceplate back as he folded down to his knees beside the mutants. He blew Scott a kiss. 

“You know,” Rogue said, barely suppressing a smile, one eyebrow lifted, “If you don’t stop flirting, your boyfriend might get jealous.”

“I’m not the jealous type, ma’am,” Steve said, seeming to appear out of nowhere, making Tony’s heart stutter even though it had just been a throwaway line. They hadn’t talked about it since that first night on the quinjet, hadn’t put a label on whatever their relationship had become. Tony tried not to read too much into the response – knowing Steve, it was just as likely that he was unable to resist such a straight line as anything else.

For someone as big as Steve, he could move like a ghost if he wanted to. Tony’s sensors had warned him of his teammate’s approach, but Cyclops and Rogue both gave a battle-trained twitch at his appearance. Logan just rolled his eyes. There was an invisible barrier of space between him and his two teammates that was not surprising for the famously antisocial mutant, but he shifted over just a little bit further as if to say _I don’t know these assholes_. Tony gave him a bright smile that he met with a glare before turning pointedly away and staring hard at the farmhouse.

Steve slid into place at Tony’s side and directed his gaze to the farmhouse. “Professor Xavier filled us in,” he said, dismissing Tony’s mock-flirting and his own casual coming out all in five words. Tony wasn’t sure if he was more turned on or impressed. “Since someone had the field leader’s line tied up,” he added in the same tone, without giving Tony so much as a glance. Tony grinned at the side of his face. Steve’s lips twitched. It wasn’t much, but Tony took his victories where he could get them.

“We ask for a team and all’s we get is you two dickheads?” Wolverine asked in a low rumble, also practicing the speaking-at-someone-without-looking-at-them trick.

“Nope,” Tony said with a _pop_ on the end, but didn’t mention that Jan had left her alcove as soon as Tony had landed, or point out that Clint was in the tree above them, or ask if Bruce was feeling at all destruction-y this evening. Wolverine could probably smell them all, and was just being a dickhead himself. He won the dickhead ribbon every time anyway. It wasn’t even a fair contest.

“Where’s this doomsday device?”

“In the barn, Cap,” Jan broke in over comms, sounding worried. She added, “It _does_ look very phallic and doomsdayish. There are six crusty old guys in white coats crawling all over it, and about…. Nine guards that I can see.”

“Piece of cake,” Tony said.

Jan let out a low sigh. “We know these guys,” she said finally. “It’s our black mask friends.”

Next to him, Steve went very still. Tony’s stomach bottomed out and then jumped back up, filled with fire and acid. “Popping up like weeds,” he said through his teeth.

“You’ve been running into these guys too?” Scott’s eyes were invisible under his visor, but Tony could feel the heat of his gaze as readily as if Scott had lifted the visor and blasted him.

“You could say that,” Steve replied, sounding remarkably placid about it. “They held me captive for about two months.”

The three X-Men went still as well, giving him wary looks. Every superhero group they were on friendly terms with (and a few they just weren’t on _unfriendly_ terms with) knew about Cap’s abduction. They’d called in just about every marker they had in the community in an effort to find Steve, but they hadn’t found a name or mission statement for this particular group of asshats. Tony flipped the faceplate back up so they couldn’t see his face.

“Sure is the same guys?” Wolverine asked finally, “Not like they’ve got the market cornered on black masks.”

“Trust me,” Jan said, darkly, “It’s the same guys.”

“That changes the game plan a bit,” Steve mused absently, seemingly unperturbed, but Tony’s HUD gave him a vitals readout at a thought. Steve’s body temperature and heart rate were both elevated, and his hands shook very faintly where they rested against the ground.

“Private band, Jarvis. Steve. You don’t have to go in there.”

Steve glanced at him, expression hard, eyes narrowing, jaw going so tight that it was surprising Tony couldn’t hear his teeth grinding. He said nothing, just turned his gaze back to the farmhouse. The barn was two hundred yards off the side of the house. It had once been painted a bright green, but it probably hadn’t been repainted in two decades. Tony would bet it hadn’t seen repairs in just as long, but knowing these bastards, it very well could have been reinforced from the inside.

Without bothering to reply to him, Steve shifted around Tony’s bulk so they formed a triangle with Cyclops. “How do you want to play this?” he asked.

Steve was a well-known control freak, but he never stepped in on someone else’s operation without permission. Just because the X-Men had asked for their help didn’t mean they needed the Avengers running all over their playground. Tony shifted so his forearm was out on the ground and keyed up Jan’s camera to the display. It projected a foot into the air, red instead of his preferred cool blue so it would be harder to see from the house. Scott stopped trying to melt Tony’s faceplate with his eyes and turned his attention to the camera.

“Take a few laps, Wasp,” Steve suggested. “Slowly,” he added when Jan shot for one corner of the room.

“Sor- _ry_ ,” she muttered, but slowed down, her hands appearing briefly as she adjusted the camera strapped to her chest and made a bobbing circuit of the room. Four of the guards were in one corner, gathered around a folding card table with a camping lamp and handfuls of cards.

“Could they _get_ more cliché?” Tony complained.

“You try babysitting a bunch of scientists while they’re scienceing,” Clint suggested, speaking for the first time and getting another startled twitch out of Rogue and Cyclops. He waved down at them with a big grin. “It’s fucking boring.”

“Clint…” Steve warned.

“I know, watch my fuckin’ mouth. Sorry, ma’am,” he said to Rogue, who rolled her eyes and flicked one finger. A pebble flew off the ground and pinged Clint, who cussed again. “See, Cap? Told’ja.”

Steve said nothing, but they all had their eyes back on the display. Jan had moved away from the card players after taking note of one player’s spectacularly shitty hand, and moved over the rest of the guards on the floor of the barn. Two were stationed at the back door, and the other six milled around the large front door. In the middle of the space, scaffolding had been built around a missile that couldn’t have had more than a foot of clearance below the rafters. Jan’s crusty old scientists were at various levels of the device, and two more were in the hayloft, onto which a hasty platform had been built so they could reach the open panel at the top.

“That doesn’t look ominous,” Rogue said.

“Any ideas, Stark?”

Tony hummed. “Jan, if you can sneak inside that panel without being seen, I need to see what’s going on in there.”

“On it, Mr. Stank,” she simpered. Tony twitched. He hadn’t even made a noise, but she knew it annoyed him enough to laugh. She hovered just above the device until one scientist called the other away, and then flitted down into it. To the naked and unsuspecting eye, she _was_ often mistaken for a real wasp, but that didn’t afford her much protection anywhere other than a garden. In the guts of a delicate machine, the white-coated men just as likely to spray her with Raid as let her go about her merry way. Tony watched anxiously, but she didn’t have a rear camera, and all he could see was the control panel.

“… Doesn’t look like any language I’ve ever seen,” Scott said after a moment of Jan examining each of the buttons.

“Some kind of code,” Tony said dismissively. On first thought, putting the button labels in code always sounded like a good idea. Until the device was going off unexpectedly and an ally who didn’t know the code couldn’t figure out which button said “off” and which button said “INSTANT DEATH.” Amateur move. Or at least a very arrogantly calculated risk.

“I can’t get into the device,” Jan whispered. “Sorry.”

“Wouldn’t want you to. Something that big is going to run on something powerful, and most things that are powerful enough to run something that big are going to put out a lot of radiation. I was just hoping they would have some of the circuitry open. Get out of there if you can.”

“You got it.” She crawled out of the space as a shadow fell across her, and then tumbled out. Tony’s stomach dropped, like it always did, but she only fell what probably amounted to a few inches before she righted herself and buzzed out of harm’s way. “All the other open things have people and hot things leaning over them,” she reported, landing on a ledge and leaning over to show one figure with a welding jacket over the white coat, helmet down, welder shooting sparks out of a cavity.

“Good news is that if they’re welding on it, chances are better than not that the payload hasn’t been installed yet,” Tony said cheerfully. “So, feel free to storm away.”

“Works for me, bub,” Wolverine muttered.

“Wasp,” Scott broke in, “Is the hayloft window bolted?”

“Lemme check.” She ran a spiral up one support beam and then zipped in and out of crossed bars, up through a gap in two floorboards, and over to the hayloft window. “Doesn’t look like it’s nailed in. I think it might just be this bolt here. I _might_ be able to get it open, but probably not very quickly or very quietly.”

“Understood. Iron Man, if you can get me and Hawkeye up to that widow and Wasp can time it right getting us in, Wolverine, Cap, and Rogue can take that back door.”

“They’re not very good at placing their personnel,” Steve said, frowning.

“Lucky for us,” was Wolverine’s response. His teeth glinted red in the light of Tony’s holographic display, his eyes momentarily alien and hungry.

“Yes, it is,” Steve said, frown only growing deeper. He let out his breath and then nodded to Cyclops. “What about the house?”

“Infrared says it’s just the tip of the ice burg,” Rogue answered for him. “Looks like there’s a whole base underneath.”

“Let me guess,” Tony said, “Nine stories.”

“Can’t see down that far,” she answered, blinking at him.

Tony shook off the question in her gaze, and said nothing else. He put himself on a private band and pinged Bruce’s comm unit. “Hope you’ve got your cranky up, Big Guy.”

“Already took my shirt off,” Bruce replied, resigned.

“Good man. Bruce…”

“I know, Tony.” His voice was gentle. Tony was glad he didn’t have to say it, and sure they were all thinking the same things. No playing nice with these guys, no getting pinned on level eight before the Hulk came out to play. Disable the device, and then drop the Hulk on them like the 30 megaton nuke he was, walk away with all their people accounted for in the aftermath.

~*~

So, things didn’t go as planned. Wasp got the window open, Cyclops and Clint went tumbling into the barn like a pair of acrobats who couldn’t decide on a common costume, Steve was flinging his shield around like a magical boomrang before the guards even decided it was worth putting the cards down, and Rogue had anyone who looked like they might be thinking _red button_ hanging up by their ankles in rafters before Tony could get a smart word out.

 _That_ all went to plan. Almost choreographed, it went so creepily smoothly. And then the floor opened up underneath the definitely-phallic doomsday missile and it got decidedly more _Overcompensating_! And less doomsday as doomseternity.

“What the hell?” Tony asked, hovering at the top of the missile and staring about nine floors down a massive silo.

“I’m not sure this is a weapon,” Bruce said with obvious confusion. “And I don’t think this is all of it.”

“It is looking a lot more rocket-like by the second. Do you want to guess how much _very bad_ they can stick in the giant rocket?”

“At least as much as three people weigh?” Bruce guessed.

“I’m going to guess you’re not wrong. Don’t forget to take your glasses off this time, buddy,” Tony said as an alarm sounded from deep in the silo. “Want a ride, birdbrain?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Clint said with a whoop. Tony turned over and caught him as he dropped out of the ceiling. He wrapped his legs around Tony’s waist and held tight while Tony turned into a dive, and down the silo they went.

“God _damn_ it, Tony!” Steve snapped, but they were already forty feet down and Clint’s excited howling drowned him out.

There was a flurry of frantic activity at the bottom of the missile and Clint’s roller-coaster shouting trailed away. “Shellhead? Is it just me… or do they look like they’re running away?”

Tony stopped their downward drop and hovered half-way down the silo while a frantic mob of white-clad scientists and black-clad guards scrambled out of the silo.  “They’re not even shooting at us,” Tony said.

“Rude,” Clint agreed and tightened his hold on Tony’s waist so he could flip upside-down and fire a volley of arrows into the crowd. The by-now familiar blue light flared, stopping the projectiles a dozen feet over the mob’s head. “No sense of hospitality,” he complained, pulling himself upright again.

Getting a queasy feeling in his gut, Tony curled one hand around Clint’s waist and pulled him in tight. “Hold on,” he said, already moving up, his path shaky sans one repulsor. “Everyone clear the building! Bruce get back in the jet and get it off the ground!”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the silo walls shuddered, and a low _fwoom_ rolled out far beneath them. The barn was shaking apart by the time they sped past the missile, and no – they weren’t just speeding past the missile, the missile was collapsing.

“You tucked in tight?” Tony asked, gritting his teeth as he fired and curled over to the take the hit from their uncontrolled ascent on his armored back. They mostly made it through the hole he’d blasted in the rafters. Mostly.

“Good,” Clint said, his lack of a smart quip almost more worrying than the grinding sound coming from below them.

“Hope you’ve been practicing your trapeze act, Summers,” Tony shouted into the main band as they cleared the barn to see their teammates speeding for safety. Scott was sprinting like a champ across the open field, but even his put-a-track-star-to-shame pace was slowing Steve down, who wouldn’t get ahead of him. Clint dropped to dangle by his knees and Scott slowed just enough to turn and throw an arm up. Clint caught him around the ribs and Scott flung his other hand up to grasp the archer’s belt. Clint made a strained noise of pain, thighs clamping down hard, but he didn’t say a word.

Freed from Scott’s slower pace, Steve dug his toes in and pulled away. In seconds, Jarvis had him clocked at 32 MPH and gaining speed quickly. He’d be a little sore when he finally stopped moving, but Tony would happily massage all the kinks out as soon as they were all off the ground.

“Rogue, Wasp, and Wolverine were on their way to the house,” Scott shouted over the speed of their movement. He huffed a breath out, obviously struggling to hold on.

“I’ve got them,” Bruce said, “My flying isn’t as impressive as Rhodey’s, but we’re in the air above you. Infrared shows you’ve got another hundred meters to get clear of the collapsing real estate, and no time to do it, Steve.”

Far behind them, the ground opened up with a great crack, and the whole area started to sink. Steve’s ground speed hit 39.7 MPH, and that might even be his personal best, but the ground in front of him gave way in a shuddery jolt. He hit an outcropping and leapt. Tony couldn’t carry three people in the lightweight suitcase suit over sustained flight, but he timed Steve’s jump and dipped to put his shoulder into the back of Steve’s thighs. He pushed the thrusters to 110% capacity, catapulting them the last few meters to the safety of the tree line.

“Messy landing!” Tony warned. Steve went flying shield-first into the trees, and all of Tony’s flaps and maneuvering jets opened to break their speed. He twisted, crashing hard through a tree and skipping through the underbrush. Scott and Clint rolled free, leaving him to crash through the last few yards alone, a trail of decimated underbrush and overturned earth left in his wake. He ended up face-down, half buried under a tree’s roots.

“Please lie still, sir,” Jarvis said when Tony tried to push himself back up. “You have sustained multiple injuries. I am currently running diagnostics.”

“Is anyone hurt?” Tony asked, ignoring him and flailing to unbury himself. “Steve?”

“Fine,” Steve responded immediately. “Hawkeye, Cyclops?”

“Still alive,” Clint said. He huffed out a breath that turned into an aborted gasp of pain. “Failed again, Tin Bucket.”

“Is this how your parties usually end?” Scott asked after a frighteningly long moment, “Because I think you can leave me off the invite list next time.”

Tony stopped trying to excavate himself and relaxed against the suit, feeling every ache and pain as they took up the rhythm of his still-too fast heartbeat. “Hey, you invited us, Scotty McFlashyeyes,” Tony reminded him.

“I thought it was McFireeyes?”

“McFlashyeyes sounds better.”

Several seconds of relative silence passed, and then Scott sighed and said, “It does sound better. Fuck you, by the way. I get _two_ Mark VIII’s for this. And I’m selling them both on Ebay.”

~*~

The flight back to headquarters was stiflingly quiet. Tony fidgeted while he looked over the incoming reports. The collapse had triggered a small quake that made chandeliers shiver for ten miles in all directions, and dozens of vehicles had fled the area like cockroaches scattering under a florescent light. SHIELD and DHS had arrived almost simultaneously to glare at each other and strut around with their tail feathers up while pretending they were cooperating. Clint had suggested they get before they were roped into playing Alphabet Soup Games referees, and the two teams had gone their separate ways. Wolverine, who was in a _better_ mood after leaping onto jet while the farmhouse roof crumbled under his feet, had broken with his usual _lone alpha_ routine long enough to chuck Steve on the shoulder as he passed. Steve didn’t seem to notice beyond a slight bob of his head that could have been a nod of acknowledgement, or might have just been a reaction to being jostled.

Steve missing an opportunity to foster good will between superteams meant Steve was very pissed, or very freaked out. Or very both. Steve took one of the benches at the back of the jet, as far away from the medbay as he could get, and stared at the middle distance. Tony hesitated in the middle of the space; he wanted to sit next to Steve, pick up his hand, and just feel his pulse. He took half a step forward, but Steve had that tight look in his jaw that used to mean they were going to start fighting any second. That was about the last thing Tony wanted on top of Jarvis’ itemized list of minor injuries, and the thought of Steve jerking away from him just made him feel tired.

Letting the suit drop down and fold back into shape, he collapsed to one of the benches and stretched his feet out in front of him. He needed to work on those specialized shoes he’d been promising himself for years, something that looked like it belonged with a Brioni suit but didn’t make his ankles swell up like a pregnant woman’s in the armor. Sounded like a great project to keep himself occupied while he was waiting for Steve’s anger bubble to pop in his face.

He glanced over at the workstation. It wasn’t as nice as his setup back home, but it was workable. He could design a pair of a shoes on it. Closing his eyes, Tony leaned his head back against the cushion and felt every one of his years instead.

~*~

Tony prodded at his soup with his spoon, watching the ripples in the surface. The table was quiet with Thor in New Mexico, everyone subdued in the wake of Steve’s uncharacteristic moody silence.

“We should put on a circus act,” Clint said through a mouthful of grilled cheese, tomato soup dribbling down his chin. He lifted a hand to wipe it off on his wrist, but Natasha reached over, pushed his arm back down, and swiped the line of soup away with a napkin. His eyes flicked over to her, she inclined her head slightly, and no one said a thing. Tony watched the interaction with a low hum of something that swirled with amusement, warmth, and the occasional stab of jealousy. He turned his eyes back to his bowl, eating because Steve’s eyes were burning a hole in the side of his face, not because he was hungry.

“Seriously, though,” Clint continued. “You should’ve _seen_ me and the Tin Can up there. Dives, loops, swooped Cyclops up like a trapeze. The kids would love it. We could do it for a charity thing. Avengers Circus! Maybe we can get T’Challa to put on a lion costume?”

“Asking the king of Wakanda to put on a lion costume for the amusement of a bunch of children doesn’t seem like a smart move, politically speaking,” Bruce pointed out.

“He already dresses up like a panther.” Clint dunked his sandwich in his bowl and sopped up a good portion of soup, tilting his head so he could catch the run off in his mouth. Tony shook his head. Watching Barton eat was almost a circus show in and of itself.

Bruce gave him a patient look. “Which is culturally significant to him and his people, not a joke.”

“But it would be for charity,” Clint maintained. “He can jump through a ring of fire. Oh! A _spinning_ ring of _swords_. That are on fire. Stark can fly me around overhead and I can shoot arrows at him. It will be like sparring. But with an audience.”

“That’s really not –”

“You almost got yourselves killed,” Steve broke in sharply. He’d been silent the entire trip home and hadn’t said a word as Rhodey and Natasha doled out bowls of hot soup and triangles of grilled cheese. His voice plowed through Clint’s chatter like a glacier among ice floes. “You almost got yourselves killed and you think it’s funny.”

“Come on, Cap. We’ve practiced that move a million times,” Clint said, but his voice had dropped from the realm of cheerful to kicked puppy. He poked at the last square of his sandwich.

“That doesn’t make it _fun_. You could have been caught inside that barn when it collapsed, you could have fallen into the sink, you could have dropped Cyclops, you could have had your brains bashed out when Iron Man threw you into the trees –”

“I did not _throw –_ ” Tony tried to defend, his spine uncurling automatically, but Steve didn’t even look at him. His glare was making Clint sink in his chair.

“All _three of you_ could have _died_ , and you want to make a goddamned circus act out of it?” Steve’s voice rose to a shout. He stood so quickly that his chair went tumbling backwards, his fists slamming into the table. His mostly untouched soup splashed out of the bowl, splattered deep orange-red across one of his cuffs, a streak of it painting out across the table’s dark wood while the team looked on in something like horror. “Maybe if you would start taking your life and those of your teammates a little more seriously –!”

Tony snapped his fingers for attention as Clint winced like he’d been struck. “Back off! Every single one of those decisions was mine, and I made them alone. You want to yell at someone for putting their teammate’s lives at risk, you turn around and yell at me. But first, I’d like to know where the hell you get off, Mr. Freedive, because I seem to remember someone whooping and shouting like he was on a rollercoaster the last time we were in the air while the bullets were flying.” 

The color drained out of Steve’s face. Tony hadn’t yelled, but he wanted to, felt the pressure of a shout building in his chest. He remembered a hundred dinners where he’d sat miserably at the table while Howard had screamed and railed, his mother sitting straight-backed in her chair, never raising her voice. He remembered that he’d wanted his mother to scream back at him. He’d resented her for years for never screaming Howard into his place, but he’d molded himself in her image rather than his father’s, always careful not to raise his voice. It made him feel sick to draw the comparison.

In the silent aftermath, Steve stumbled backwards like he’d meant to sit down. He ran into his overturned chair and scrambled out from between the legs, nearly tripping in the process. Breathing hard, he stood there for several seconds with his head bowed. He sucked in a slow breath, looked up at Clint and said, “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

His expression was trying to find one of those rock hard I Am A Soldier masks, but he just looked tortured, eyes too wide, cheeks too pale. He seemed somehow small and young standing in the middle of the dining room like he wanted to cross his arms over his stomach and was just barely stopping himself from doing it.

Setting the chair carefully upright, Steve nodded to the room. “Excuse me.” He beat a hasty retreat before anyone could get their vocal chords to work.

“Thanks, mom,” Clint muttered.

Tony shuddered and swallowed hard before his stomach could make a bid for freedom. He couldn’t tell from Clint’s tone if he was resentful or grateful, and didn’t try to figure it. “Eat your dinner,” he said automatically, and then winced, the words echoing in his head in his mother’s voice.

Gathering up his and Steve’s barely-touched meals, Tony made his own escape to the kitchen. The bowls rattled in his hands as he crossed around the center island. He was cognizant of the silence behind him, everyone’s eyes on him. The chatter of the bowls against their plates was loud in the heavy silence, and it was all Tony could do to quietly rinse the bowls and set them in the dishwasher rather than flinging them the floor for the satisfaction of hearing them shatter.

When he looked up, everyone was very conspicuously minding their plates except Rhodey. He caught Tony’s eyes, and hiked his eyebrow in a silent question. Tony shook his head. Rhodey pursed his lips and cocked his head to the side, arms crossing over his chest. Tony rolled his eyes, wiped his hands off, and announced, “I’m in the workshop if anyone needs me.”

“Tones,” Rhodey said warningly.

Tony blew him a kiss. “Night, huggybear. We’ll debrief tomorrow. Summers says he misses you, B-T-W.”

“Mmmhm.” Rhodey gave him a knowing look. “Building specialized toys again?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tony sniffed, but when Rhodey gave the hallway a significant glance, Tony sighed and nodded. Rather than taking the elevator to the workshop, he turned down the hallway to Steve’s room. The door was closed, and there was only silence beyond. Tony stopped and stared, eyes following the grain of the wood, barely visible through the white paint. There was a secret   in there, some kind of language he didn’t understand. He leaned his forehead against it and just took slow breaths.

“Cap?” he called through the door reluctantly. The silence on the other side took on a quality of awareness, but Steve didn’t respond. Tony sucked in a breath, thought about turning away, but tried again, “Steve? Come on, haven’t you heard of the whole _never go to sleep angry_ thing?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say he was sorry, but he wasn’t really. He was sorry for bringing up the day Steve had been captured, but he wasn’t sorry for getting in between Steve and the team when he was being unfair. That’s what they did for each other – checks and balances.

“Who said anything about sleeping?” Steve asked softly from the other side of the door. Tony heard the soft _thunk_ of Steve’s forehead hitting the door too. Didn’t they make a perfect pair?

“Well, if you’re not sleeping, I’m not sleeping. But when Pepper wants to know who’s responsible for the mess, I’m pointing her at you, buddy.”

“That’s dirty pool, Stark,” Steve complained on a huff of air, but there was a hint of a reluctant smile in his voice.

“Only kind I know how to play.” Tony felt more than heard Steve’s hand sliding across the door. He pulled his forehead away from it just as Steve twisted the knob and let the door drift open. Tony prodded at it, widening the gap by another few inches. The room was flooded with soft yellow light, insulated against the darkness outside the windows. He made a mental note to have baseboard lights installed in Steve’s room. Steve had never said that their sleeping arrangement was permanent. Tony hadn’t tried to bring it up, and the not-knowing stopped him from wrapping his arms around Steve’s waist and kissing the back of his neck until he turned around.

Steve had his hands braced on his art table, staring out the window over the sprawl of the city. His reflection was equal parts exhausted and troubled. Tony moved to sit on the bed, aborted halfway there, and ended up leaning against the wall beside the closet. He examined the room idly – it was a smaller room at Steve’s request, not much bigger than the average hotel room, Tony would guess. Queen bed, two nightstands, artists’ table with clear drawers hinting at colored pencils and paint brushes, tall bookshelf stuffed with varied texts and bric a brac. His nightstands were Spartan – bedside lamp, dish of coins, a pair of neatly stacked paperback books. Nothing was out of place, but it wasn’t a depressing room. It definitely screamed Steve – a mixture of order and sentiment.

“You okay?” he asked finally, nudging the coins in the dish. 97 cents.

“I shouldn’t have blown up at Clint like that,” Steve said. “You’re right, and I was out of line.” He bowed his head so his chin touched his chest and took several deep breaths. “I was scared out there, Tony,” he said very softly. “I don’t think I’ve been that scared in battle since I went after Bucky and the 107th. Not just adrenalin, it was like… I had never seen combat before in my life.” He twisted back finally to look at Tony, face flushed with shame.

Tony want to kiss him, touch him, stand next to him and lean into him so their body heat mingled. Even before Steve’s unexpected confession, Tony would have at least been able to stand next to him, put a hand on his back. The cautious newness of their relationship kept him from doing even that. He shifted his weight restlessly against the wall, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“It’s the first time you’ve been out of the training room since we got you back,” Tony said finally. “And we’re right back at those bastards with the black masks, on top of a secret buried base that was shaking itself apart. No one is going to blame you for freaking out a bit.” He managed a smile that Steve didn’t return. “You _are_ human. Just in case you’ve forgotten.”  

“It’s not acceptable,” Steve said. “Not for me.”

“How about for me?” Tony pushed himself away from the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “How about if we were flying off into the void and _I_ panicked?”

“Jesus, Tony. Of course I wouldn’t expect you to not react to that.” Steve mirrored Tony’s posture, but didn’t turn away from the window.

By the look on his face, he knew where Tony was going with his narrative, but Tony spelled it out anyway. “This is one of those reasons why the teams have co-leaders instead of Leaders Supreme,” Tony reminded him. “You were the one who pushed for that. You brought up exactly this kind of scenario, insisted that both teams had two leaders in case something happened to one of us, in case we lost objectivity, in case we were… I don’t know. Mind controlled? So you got scared, and you reacted like humans do when we’re scared for the people we care about. We’re not going to crucify you for it, Steve.”

“I think the team needs to pick a new co-leader for you,” Steve said as if nothing Tony had said had impacted in the slightest.

“No.”

“Tony…”

“No, not gonna happen. You’re Team One lead.” He gestured in between them. “We’re partners, we’re in this together.”

Steve made an irritated noise and shifted side-to-side, obviously not sure of where he wanted to go, but sure that he wanted to move. He threw his hands out in a gesture of pure frustration and then raked them through his hair. “Tony, you have to be impartial about this! I’m a liability!”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tony snapped. “You were your usual Cucumber in a Flag self out in the field, you made all the right calls, you liaised with the best of them. Oh, and by the way, just a quick reminder there that neither of us was in charge anyway. _We’re following your lead, Scotty McFlashyeyes,_ remember?”

Steve finally cracked a smile, a short laugh escaping out past his teeth before he stifled it. “I did not say that.”

“Close enough. Steve, none of us expect perfection out of you. Well, maybe Coulson does, but that’s Coulson. And there _is_ this other guy who expects perfection out of you too, to be fair.”

Looking like he was already regretting it, Steve warily took the bait and asked, “Who’s that?”

“This real big jerk I know. Six foot something, two hundred and forty something pounds, runs around with a giant, patriotic Frisbee. You probably don’t know him.” He waved a hand dismissively and Steve finally turned to face him, the line of his lips softening into something that wasn’t exactly a smile, but wasn’t _not_ a smile either. The window was less likely to melt anyway.

Tony moved around the bed, taking a moment to smooth down one of the hospital corners with exaggerated care. “See, he’s really good at everything he does, and – wow – looks _really_ good doing it, so he expects you to be really good at everything all the time. And I mean _you_ , not the metaphorical second person.” He gestured at Steve’s chest to emphasize the point.

Steve sucked in a breath and let it go in a soft sigh. He shook his head, but gave Tony a smile and said, “He does sound like a jerk. Who else but a jerk would run around with a giant Frisbee?”

“Well, frat boys,” Tony mused, “Though – still, most likely jerks. Pro Frisbee players? I knew a pro Frisbee player back in my wilder days, and it took her three whole days to convince me that pro Frisbee was an actual thing. You should have seen –”

Leaning over, Steve set their lips together. He was gentle enough about it that Tony was able to keep talking right against his mouth for another few seconds before Steve laughed and pressed into him. He made the daring move of pushing his tongue between Tony’s teeth mid-word, and Tony should have bitten him out of principle, but the slick warmth was too good to pass up for principle. Steve’s mouth felt feverishly hot. He was adorably shy as he explored Tony’s teeth with the tip of his tongue, drew back just enough to nibble on Tony’s lower lip, and then pressed in again. Tony struggled with conflicting desires. He knew he should move away, because Steve obviously wasn’t back to anything like normal, but it was all he could do to just keep his hands to himself. He grabbed onto his pant legs and tightened his grip.

“You’re trying your best to make me jealous today,” Steve murmured against Tony’s lips.

“Is it working?” Tony asked, because his mouth ran off on its own when he didn’t know what else to say.

“I don’t think you want to see me jealous. I can be… stubborn.”

“Oh, really?” Tony leaned back in mock-surprise, eyes wide, one hand set delicately against his chest. He took the opportunity to step back, unintentionally run into the edge of the bed.

Steve’s smile twisted into a smirk. He nodded and added, “Possessive.” He nudged Tony’s shoulder with a hand, pushing him gently down. “And very demanding.”

Tony dropped to the bed, let himself bounce, and pillowed his head on one hand. “I never would have guessed,” he said breathlessly, staring up at Steve.

Backlit by the closest lamp, Steve looked like something superhuman, something suddenly beyond Tony’s comprehension. He moved like a cat to pull his shirt off, muscles rippling in a lazy but very deliberate way that had always been lacking when he undressed for bed. He stood there for several seconds to just let Tony look at him, and Tony could tell he was blushing even with the light behind him. Despite it, he shifted his weight confidently and put a knee up on the bed. Tony obligingly scooted up toward the pillows as Steve crawled forward.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” Tony said, just so Steve didn’t think he was getting away with it, “I know you’re distracting me –” he curled up to meet Steve’s kiss, “– And it’s going to work, but just so _you_ know –” Another fast kiss, warm and messy, “–That _I_ know.”

Steve shifted and pressed down so they were lined up from knee to hip, hiking an eyebrow at Tony’s hastily indrawn breath. “Want me to stop?”

Tony set aside the first quip that came to his tongue and focused his attention on Steve’s face. He braced both hands on Steve’s hips to stall the rocking motion that was going to distract him into doing something stupid. “Do _you_ want to stop?” he asked quietly. “You know that I wasn’t flirting with Scott to make you jealous. I wasn’t really flirting at all – that’s just how I communicate. It wasn’t a complaint. I don’t… expect anything out of you.”

Tipping his head to one side, Steve frowned. “I know,” he said, but he’d paused just long to let Tony know that he _hadn’t_ really known, not for sure. “But you’re spoiling the mood.”

“Moods can be picked up later. I don’t want you here because you think you have to be here to keep me. I’m not going anywhere, Steve. I’m here for as long as you want me.” Tony was painfully aware that Steve wanting him might disappear once he really had his feet under himself again, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want to push Steve away to save himself the heartbreak. He also didn’t want to push Steve into something he might struggle to get himself out of later.

Steve’s arms started to shake. If it were anyone other than Steve, Tony would have thought he was just getting tired of holding himself up, but it wasn’t anyone other than Steve.

“Tony?” Steve whispered. He’d put so little breath to it that Tony read his lips more than heard it. “Would you be angry if I said I loved you?”

Tony’s chest gave an alarming jerk. If it weren’t for the reactor, he might think he was having a heart attack. “What?”

Steve looked so earnest and so scared. His shoulders hunched up, elbows pulling in tight to his sides, the tremor extending from his arms to his whole body. “I love you, Tony Stark.”

“I.” Tony might have been drowning. He shifted restlessly under Steve’s body. “Steve. You? I think I’ve loved you since I woke up on that street after.” He couldn’t say it. “You still owe me a kiss for that.”

The sheer joy on Steve’s face should have burned him to a cinder. Smiling so wide that Tony could see his back teeth, Steve leaned down and kissed him, slow and thorough. He lowered his weight slowly to the bed, rolling them over so they ended up face-to-face. He cupped a hand around Tony’s cheek and stroked his thumb across the stubble dusting his jaw. The position put pressure on the bruises coloring his ribs, so he fumbled above his head for a pillow and dragged it behind his back. Leaning back against the cushion, he tugged Steve half on top of him and relaxed into the kiss.

~*~

He didn’t think he’d ever gone to bed with someone fully clothed and fallen asleep in the middle of a kiss. He woke up with Steve staring down at him, face lit by the rising sun, expression soft. Tony groaned and realized that he was still dressed all the way down to his shoes. He hid his face against Steve’s chest and kicked them off roughly, the thump of them hitting the ground surprisingly satisfying.

Steve kissed his temple. “Sorry, I should have taken them off for you. I was a little distracted.”

“Massage it and make it better,” Tony ordered, voice muffled against Steve’s bare skin. He hadn’t expected Steve to actually move, but stopped complaining about the loss of body heat when Steve slid off the end of the bed and took one of Tony’s besocked feet in hand. It was hard to be annoyed at much of anything when the day started with a foot massage.


	6. Six

Chapter Six

Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters was impressive in a different way than the Tower. It was all dark paneled walls, vaulted ceilings, and fantastic hardwood floors. Steve had been to the mansion only once before, and it had been teaming with students at the time. Ororo lead him through the empty halls, Tony, Jan, and Rhodey trailing behind. Tony had his face all-but plastered to his tablet, Rhodey steering him with offhanded nudges. Jan looked just as impressed with the old house as Steve, and had her head turned up to examine the ceiling as they passed down a long corridor.

Ororo didn’t seem to mind them being tourists in the house, and she smiled indulgently when Steve stopped to examine a painting. He ducked his head. “Sorry.”

“Not at all, Captain,” she said evenly, smile only growing wider, “I am proud of my home, and we’re not in a great hurry.”

Tony nearly ran into him, but Rhodey grabbed him by the collar at the last step and steered him to a stop. Steve gestured for Ororo to continue, setting a hand on Tony’s lower back to get him moving again. He didn’t seem to notice that he was being led around, thoroughly lost in whatever he had his nose in. Steve wondered briefly if he should have just left Tony at home, but even as he thought it, Tony finished what he was doing and clicked the display off. He tucked it against his elbow and gave Steve a beaming smile that made him think Tony was perfectly aware of being led after all, and he enjoyed it. He winked when Rhodey reached over without looking to nudge him around a corner. Steve shook his head.

The conference room was a comparatively modest space, though it opened on both sides to larger rooms. The table in the center was laid out with sandwiches, fresh fruit and vegetables, and carafes of water and juice. Scott and Anna Marie stood close to the windows, talking in hushed tones, and Logan sat slouched in a chair, idly scratching his chin with the tips of his claws. He looked up when the door opened and grinned, sheathing the adamantium claws with a wet _snict_.

“Enjoyin’ the field trip?” Logan asked, sinking further into the chair, legs going wide in a posture that bordered on lewd.

Steve hiked an eyebrow at him, but Tony spoke before he could. “Well, the tour was lacking, but at least we get juice,” he said, and then smiled at Ororo to add, “No offense.”

“School tours are offered in the summers, second Wednesday of the month,” she said sweetly, “We can even get you a name tag and a hat if you’d like.”

Tony took one hand out of his pocket to whirl a finger over his head. “Only if it has helicopter blades on the top,” he said with a charming smile.

Jan elbowed him in the side as she passed to the table. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said, because Tony was not above wearing a helicopter hat out in public. Steve had seen the pictures of the silver pants and shiny see-through black tank top, and wouldn’t have been surprised by a helicopter hat in the least. Neither, he imagined, would the rest of the world.

Tony held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Did you get my present, Mr. McFlashyeyes?” he called, getting an immediate wince out of Scott and a stifled laugh from Anna Marie and Ororo both.

Scott turned to glare at Tony. Steve watched the expression curiously – so much of human expression was based around the eyes, but Scott’s were perpetually covered. Even without his visor, the deep ruby glasses concealed a swathe of his face from one temple to the other. Scott’s glare was mostly in the lips – they pulled together, corners turning down, the motion pushing his cheeks up. Steve wondered if he’d had to practice it.

“Yes,” Scott said finally, “I added the _eight foot tall_ Iron Man cut out to the fire wood pile. I’m sure it will make great tinder, very much appreciated.”

Tony snorted, picking up a sandwich and nudging one piece of bread up to examine the insides. Satisfied, he let the bread fall and licked his fingertip. He gave Scott a smug smile and added a handful of carrots and a cookie to his plate. “Ororo already told me you put it up in the training room.”

Scott’s head jerked to face Storm, another exaggerated motion meant to show who he was looking at. She smiled, completely unrepentant, and said nothing. Scott rolled his head as a substitute to rolling his eyes and left his position by Anna Marie’s side to collect a sandwich of his own. He and Tony immediately started bickering, Tony blatantly stealing food off Scott’s plate when he wasn’t paying attention, and Jan plucking if off of Tony’s plate almost immediately after. Rhodey had drifted over to one side of the room with Ororo, leaving Steve alone by the door to take in the dynamic. He felt strangely uncomfortable in the room. He didn’t have anything against anyone there, had worked with each of them in the past, but something about the room was making him feel confined. He stretched hi neck side-to-side and took a slow step backwards, trying to figure it out what was making his shoulders tightened up. He realized he was clenching his jaw and made a conscious effort to relax.

“Drives ya’ nuts, right?”

Steve glanced to his right to find Logan holding out a plate piled with sandwiches, sticks of cheese wrapped in prosciutto, and a pile of tomatoes. When Steve didn’t take the plate right away, Logan shoved it at him so that Steve had no choice but to take the plate or let it drop to the floor. Three sandwiches teetered on the brink of tumbling over, so Steve rescued one and took a bite. Chicken pesto with sundried tomatoes and some kind of sauce that had a little spice to it.

“Thank you,” he said. Logan was giving him a strangely satisfied look that did nothing to ease the tension in his shoulders. He took another bite so he had an excuse not to talk.

“They’re like children,” Logan said after a second of watching Tony and Jan arguing over a cookie. Jan solved the debate by taking a big bite out of it and then shoving the rest in Tony’s mouth.

Steve made a noncommittal noise. They were, sometimes, but Steve didn’t like Logan’s tone, the condescension there. He didn’t know the man well, but he’d never had trouble with him before. Logan was usually quiet and kept to himself, communicated more often in growls than words, but was generally insightful. Something must have happened in the year since Steve had last seen him to make him bitter.

“But it looks like you’ve got that one in hand well enough,” Logan finished, nudging Steve with his elbow in a very familiar way and giving him a lopsided smile. His eyes darted over to Tony with a certain avarice that didn’t seem exactly sexual, but was definitely aggressive.

Before Steve could get over his shock and figure out how to respond, the door opened again.

“We appreciate you coming to meet with us,” Professor Xavier said as he rolled into the room. His perpetually calm, kindly smile was firmly affixed to his face, hands folded in his lap.

The chatter in the room slowly died down and they moved to seats. Steve took the closet seat, Tony ending up on his right, and Logan on his left. He set his plate down and tried to ignore the annoyance and unease building up along his spine. He shifted subtly toward Tony, who leaned forward to snag another cookie and dropped it on Steve’s plate. On his other side, he heard Logan growl. He felt every hair on his body stand up right, a shudder rippling down his limbs. Logan leaned back in the chair and said nothing. Steve ignored him.

Xavier settled himself and gave them all an even brighter smile. Steve had never been comfortable around the mutant, but the professor’s presence made him even more uneasy than on their few previous meetings, though it was difficult to tell if his uneasiness was because of the professor or Logan’s strange behavior. Usually they communicated over the phone, but in light of their mutual enemy, Xavier suggested a face-to-face, and Steve hadn’t been able to argue his logic. Despite Tony’s insistence on technology being capable of anything and everything, there were some things that were just done better in person. Still, Steve shifted uncomfortably in his seat as the professor’s brilliant blue eyes fell on him. He liked Xavier as a person and respected him as a leader, but he couldn’t help being anxious with a mind reader in the room.

“I don’t take any offense,” Xavier said with a smile that made Steve blush hotly.

He felt the curious gazes of his teammates on him, but didn’t try to explain. He cleared his throat. “Thank you for inviting us. And for lunch,” he added, gesturing to his nearly-full plate. He popped a cherry tomato into his mouth and bit down on it, savoring the bright burst of acid on his tongue while the others murmured their thanks. Steve and Rhodey had considered and dismissed the idea of bringing everyone along, and had finally decided on just team leaders. Steve was anxious to get back to headquarters, even knowing that there wasn’t much that his teammates wouldn’t be able to handle in the absence of their leaders.

“It would seem,” Xavier said, “That we have been dealing with the same mysterious aggressors recently.” He waved a hand and Anna Marie helpfully turned on the briefing screen. Xavier gave her a smile and a nod of thanks. “We first encountered them when tipped off that a research facility was experimenting on young mutants,” he continued, his eyes turning sad as pictures of young boys and girls filled the screens, “And then several weeks later at an unrelated event nearly a thousand miles away. Again, only a few days after that, and finally at the farmhouse three days ago.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’ve had any more luck figuring out who they are than we have,” Jan observed, biting her lip and frowning up at the screen.

“Unfortunately not,” Ororo answered, “But the sheer scale of their operation as well as the level of their technology is… troubling.”

“Tell me about it,” Tony muttered.

Steve looked up at the briefing screen, keeping his face blank. The nauseatingly familiar black-clad guards with their black masks were on screen. “Have you captured any alive?” he asked. He knew that the Avengers had tried when they’d rescued Steve, but the mystery organization killed their injured if they couldn’t be moved, and had a tendency toward self-destruction if they couldn’t avoid capture. As far as he knew, no one had been recovered alive from the farmhouse or the trailer park bases, though he wouldn’t put it past SHIELD or DHS to make the prisoners disappear into the system.

“No,” Wolverine growled to Steve’s left, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring vaguely in the direction of the cookie still sitting on top of Steve’s sandwiches. Steve was starting to suspect that Logan was coming on to him – food sharing might have that kind of significance to him, and he was acting both aggressive and jealous. Steve didn’t know what to make of it. He broke off a piece of the cookie and nibbled on it.

“I take it you’ve had the same difficulty?” Xavier pressed after a brief lapse. He was watching Steve and Logan with an intense expression that made Steve shift in his chair. He swallowed to respond, but Tony and Rhodey were already nodding in answer. Steve put the rest of the cookie down and dusted off his hands, nudging the plate slightly away.

“What about technology?” Tony asked. He tapped away at his tablet, projecting his mockup of the personal shield device along with his EMP cannon. “This is all we’ve been able to retrieve that was useable.”

“How well does that work?” Scott asked, pointing at the cannon.

Tony grinned. Next to him, Rhodey looked smug. Tony gave Scott and exaggerated leer and asked, “What’ll you give me for it?”

Scott scowled. “How about not using your toys for target practice and posting the video on YouTube?” he offered.

“Pfft,” Tony said, rolling his eyes, “Like I can’t just send you more. Did you like the tsum tsums?”

Scott’s face turned red and Steve reached out to put a restraining hand on Tony’s shoulder. He wasn’t sure what a tsum tsum was, but Tony had obviously gone overboard, as he did with most things. “We will be happy to share the EMP cannon with you, and are grateful for anything you are willing to share on that front as well.”

“You should let them go at it,” Logan murmured, leaning close enough for Steve to smell his earthy-sweet aftershave. “It’s fun when they get each other all riled up.”

“I think we can bypass the measuring contest just for today, Logan,” Anna Marie said before Steve could figure out how to respond. Logan sniffed and settled back in his chair, but his cologne lingered. It was a scent that Steve could just _almost_ identify, something familiar that teased at his memory. Maybe something from his childhood. Logan was old enough that he could be wearing something from the era.

“What are we even calling these guys?” Jan asked, breaking into his thoughts. “I’ve been calling them Capnapping Assholes, but I guess that doesn’t work for the newspapers.”

Stunned silence fell a moment before Steve blurted out a startled laugh. Jan beamed at him, preening in her chair where she sat between Ororo and Anna Marie. Steve reined his laughter in quickly, covering it up with a cough.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Rhodey muttered with a frown. Tony elbowed him in the side. Rhodey elbowed him back. Steve just watched them in dismay and gave Xavier an apologetic shrug. Xavier looked on with a resigned amusement that suggested he was used to the horsing around of superheroes when they weren’t in hero mode.

“We haven’t found anything yet that indicates what their purpose is, or what they call themselves. So far the only thing any of their operations seem to have in common is the way the guards dress,” the professor pointed out, gesturing up to the screen again once Rhodey and Tony had stopped discreetly shoving at each other.

“So we stick with Black Masks until further notice?” Ororo guessed, lifting her hands.

“While not as colorful as… _Capnapping Assholes_ ,” Xavier said with a smile that made his eyes twinkle, “It does seem more prudent.”

Blushing faintly, Jan said, “Fine by me.”

Scott stood in the lull and snagged the remote from Anna Marie. “We were able to salvage some tech from the research facility. Most of the computers and data storage was slagged before they took off, but we did scoop up a few things we haven’t been able to figure out.” He pushed a few buttons, his lips tightening down into a tight bud of annoyance when the screen didn’t move.

Anna Marie rolled her eyes and gestured toward herself with two fingers. The remote flew out of his hand and landed neatly in her palm. She keyed up the correct slide and Tony’s expression lost all traces of teasing. He sat forward in his seat, examining the slowly spinning display with a furrow between his brows. His fingers twitched on the tabletop. Steve could tell that he was trying to drag the model forward so he could examine it more closely and was being defeated by the inferior technology.

“What does Hank think of it?” Tony asked, stalling while he tried to figure out what it was. He tapped the side of his pink-tinted glasses to get Jarvis involved. Xavier gave him an amused smile that he seemed to miss.

“Hank,” Scott reminded him, “Is in Romania. With Reed. Otherwise, we would be talking to one of them.”

Logan snorted in amusement, but Anna Marie casually flicked a pen at Scott’s head. “Be nice,” she scolded.

Tony, deep into engineer mode and ignoring them both, got up from the table and walked closer to the model. It was an oddly shaped device that looked like a pentagonal block stacked on a spinning top with a teacup on the other side. Tony reached out automatically for the screen, made an annoyed sound low in his throat when the screen didn’t respond, and jerked his sleeve up to tap at his wrist watch. A 3D model of the device projected up from his watch and he frowned at it, using his right hand to spin it around. Steve watched his hands as Tony manipulated the image. Steve had always liked his hands, even before they got out of their initial bout of antagonism. Calloused and scarred, but well cared for all the same, managing to be both elegant and strong. Steve had a lot of sketchbooks filled with Tony’s hands.

“Getting any weird readings off it?” Tony asked curiously, glancing over at Xavier. Steve looked up, too, and found Xavier watching him with a curious expression. Steve turned away and tried to think more quietly. He knew that Xavier didn’t intentionally invade other people’s privacy, but he couldn’t help it if other people screamed at him. He started counting silently, hoping to occupy himself enough that he didn’t wander off on tangents.

“All the information we’ve been able to glean will be sent along with the device if you would like to look it over.” Xavier said after a brief pause.

Tony nodded. “I’d like to bring Bruce and some equipment and look at it here before we move it,” he said, “You’re keeping it somewhere blast proof?”

Xavier nodded. “Of course. There are a few other items as well that are just as baffling.”

Tony gave him a businesslike nod, but Steve could see the spark of excitement in his eyes, in the way he tapped his finger against his opposite wrist. Rhodey caught Steve’s attention and then rolled his eyes expressively. He mouthed _here we go_ , and breathed out a sigh. Steve stifled a laugh and Rhodey grinned at him, shooting Tony a fondly exasperated look.

“Where is it?” Tony asked, folding a hand over the holographic device and pushing it back into his watch. He let his hand fall, jostling his arm slightly to resettle his cuff. He looked up at Xavier expectantly.

The professor looked to Ororo and waved a hand slightly in permission.

She nodded gracefully, stood, and told Tony, “Looks like you get a tour after all.”

“Goody,” Tony said, brimming with enthusiasm, “Where’s my hat?” He moved to follow her, but looked back at Steve over his shoulder. “Can you fetch Bruce? And tell him to bring snacks. And Dum-E.”

“You’re letting Dum-E out of the workshop?” Rhodey asked dubiously. “Sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’ll be _fine_ ,” Tony reassured him, waving his concerns off. “It’s been at least ten years since the last time he’s set off an actual explosion.”

The last was clearly for Scott’s benefit, who twitched and folded one hand around his glasses. Steve took the excuse to get away from Logan and his cologne readily and followed them into the hall. He shifted to turn the other direction, but Tony grabbed his elbow and towed him along until they were out of hearing range of the conference room.

“What the heck is up with He Man in there?” he asked, frowning hard, his voice lowered to a soft hiss. “You two get into something we don’t know about?”

Steve shook his head, baffled. “Other than the farmhouse, I haven’t seen him in probably a year.”

“He’s been behaving strangely,” Ororo confided. “About… nine or so months ago, he left to track down a lead on his past. He returned three months ago and he’s been odd since.”

“Odd how?” Tony asked, shifting to face her.

Ororo shrugged. “This _is_ Logan, so perhaps not so odd. He’s been both more social and more aggressive since he came home. He won’t talk about what he found in Canada.”

Steve felt some of the tension leak out of him. “Revisiting old memories can be hard,” he said with a small nod that Ororo returned. Tony didn’t seem satisfied with this explanation, so Steve said, “I can take care of myself.”

Tony made a humming noise. Ororo drifted away to give them a modicum of privacy without leaving them alone in the mansion. Tony reached forward to touch two fingers to Steve’s right hand. He watched Steve’s face with an intensity that made Steve feel like he was being flayed open. He waited helplessly under the microscope of Tony’s gaze for an assessment on whether or not he’d passed muster. He unconsciously straightened his shoulders, remembering every recruitment station he’d been 4F’d out of. Tony relaxed slowly and set a gentle hand on Steve’s cheek. Steve reached up unthinkingly to cover it with his own.

“You don’t have to be here if it makes you uncomfortable.”

Steve’s temper flared. His jaw tightened and he sucked in a breath through his nose, hand squeezing Tony’s where it was still pressed to his cheek. Tony kept his hand where it was, one eyebrow lifted almost like a dare. Steve let his breath out. “I understand that you’re trying to take care of me,” he said, “And I know I don’t make that easy, usually. But I’m fine. I’m not a child, Tony. I will tell you if I’m in over my head. Stop treating me like I’m made of glass.”

Tony’s eyes turned sad. He tapped his fingers softly on Steve’s cheek, and then turned his hand to capture Steve’s. He set a gentle kiss to Steve’s index finger, and then dropped his hand. He backed up a few steps toward Ororo. “Don’t get into too much trouble without me!” he said over his shoulder.

“How can I when you’re taking all the trouble with you?” Steve asked automatically. Steve felt like he’d been socked in the gut by the words and was glad that Tony had already turned away. Pressing a hand to his stomach, he pivoted on his heel to keep his back to the retreating pair and forced himself to breathe slowly.

“You alright, bub?”

Steve looked up sharply. Now that he knew the scent, he could smell Logan’s cologne from the distance that separated them. Logan was leaning against the door jam, watching Steve with an intensity that was not unlike Tony’s examination of the minute before. Rather than making him hold his breath in anticipation, he felt a surge of anger boil up under his ribs. He tipped his head to examine Logan where he slouched against the wall, indolent in the way of an idle predator.

“Wanna go a few rounds?” Steve asked.

Logan grinned at him.

~*~

“So, I’m sure you thought this was a good idea at the time,” Bruce said, examining the long cut down Steve’s left flank that was slowly oozing blood. He prodded at it gently with his gloved hands and glanced up at Steve. “You know that if you were anyone else, we’d be rushing you to the emergency room?”

“I’ve had worse,” Steve grunted. He was propped up on his elbows on the medbed, his uninjured leg hanging off the side, the right presented for examination, one pant leg cut clean off and shirt rucked up.

Bruce hummed. “You heal too fast for stitches,” he said finally. “I’ll put some superglue and butterfly sutures on it and wrap it up. Try not to pick any more fights for a while?” he suggested.

Steve gave him a weary smile. “I’ll do my best.” He’d given just as good as he’d gotten and Logan was off somewhere licking his wounds, but he healed even faster that Steve, so he’d probably be swaggering around the mansion by the time Bruce got him closed up.

“Is this the part where you ask me not to tell Tony that you were less than a centimeter away from having your femoral artery slashed open?” Bruce asked conversationally as he pinched the edges of the long gash shut and applied a suture. He glanced up at Steve as he did, but Steve didn’t mind the attention. He didn’t seem like he was looking for anything from Steve, not trying to peel back the layers and see into his soul. He was just giving Steve his attention.

“No,” Steve said, laughing despite himself. “I’ll tell him myself.”

Bruce hummed again, bending back to his work. The gash itself started over his hip and snaked around his thigh, but only about four inches of it needed more care than the serum could immediately provide. Steve probably would have just wrapped it in a thick bandage if Bruce hadn’t arrived just in time to see Logan tear him open. There had been a touchy few minutes there when Bruce started to go a bit green around the eyes, but Logan had helpfully bounded off at Steve’s command, and Steve had been able to calm Bruce down before he was too far into the transformation to be stopped.

“Usually I would say that you need to be on crutches for a few days to keep from tearing it open, but it’s not like you’d listen to me,” Bruce concluded as he finished up the sutures and taped a gauze pad over the worst of it. The shallow end of the cut was already starting to heal and wasn’t worth the time to bandage it.

“Thanks, Bruce,” Steve said, not needing to respond to his accusation, though he probably would have taken a few steps with the crutches if Bruce had insisted.

“If you decide to take on Summers, I am not going to be sympathetic about the burns,” Bruce warned. He pulled his gloves off so they ended up in a neat inside-out packet. Steve snagged a wet wipe and scrubbed at the worst of the blood as he swung himself into a sitting position. Bruce busied himself cleaning up his tray as Steve shucked off the ruined pants and underwear. He walked half-naked into the cabin to retrieve a spare set of clothes. They all kept at least one full set of clothing in the overhead bin for situations like this one, as well as an assortment of other clothes for potential guests.

“ _Really,_ Steve?” Jan demanded, exasperated, as she climbed up through the open floor hatch.

Steve looked over at her curiously, boxer briefs around one ankle. “You’ve seen me naked before,” he defended, pulling them up carefully over the bandage.

Jan snorted. “I didn’t mean _that_. I meant the giant freaking _cut_ on your leg?”

“Really, man?” Rhodey added, appearing a moment after her. “What did you do?”

“Sparring with Logan,” Steve said evenly. He adjusted the waistband of his underwear and sat down to get his pants on.

“The guy harasses you all through lunch and you decide it’s a good idea to get in a fight with him?” Rhodey clarified.

Steve considered the assessment and then shrugged. “Basically.”

Rhodey shook his head and Jan groaned, “ _Boooys_ , uhg. You’re lucky you’re a super soldier. You planning on telling Tony?”

“Why does everyone think I _wouldn’t_ tell Tony? He’s my co-leader. He needs to know when I’m injured.”

“ _May_ be,” Jan said slowly, “Because Tony will be in the suit and chasing Logan down about two seconds later?”

“Tony is not going to go after someone because I was hurt while sparring,” Steve said, rolling his eyes.

~*~

“Want me to kill him?” Tony asked matter-of-factly, looking up from the strange device he was leaning over, hand still poised above it with a slender, pointed metal rod attached to a white cord.

Steve dragged his eyes away from the smooth black surface of the device to share the joke, but Tony looked serious. Behind Steve, Bruce snorted in amusement as he got himself settled at his temporary work station. Dum-E rolled in behind him and beeped and interrogative.

“Daddy is just maybe going to commit murder,” Tony reassured him. He looked up at Steve questioningly. “Yes or no, Cap?”

“No, Tony!” Steve hissed. Tony might have been flippant with the question, but he was often flippant when he was at his most serious.

Tony turned back to the device, setting the metal rod against the side and looking down at his tablet. Steve watched him, fascinated by the item himself – the texture was so smooth it seemed almost wet, but Steve couldn’t see his reflection in the surface, just the gleam of the laboratory lights. Steve wanted to reach out and touch it, see if his fingerprints would be left on the surface, it if would react to his body heat.

Not looking back up at him, Tony asked, “You sure? I think I can take him.” Before Steve could answer, Tony added, “Love that this is your idea of keeping out of trouble, by the way. Good job.”

“We were just sparring.” Steve felt unaccountably like a small child called out on the carpet. He cast a baffled looked between Tony and Bruce.

“Leave me out of it,” Bruce said without hesitation, lifting both hands. He gathered up a bundle of technology and set it out on the main table. He plopped a bag on the counter by Tony’s elbow. “Brought you chili lime peanuts. Where do you want this?”

Tony gestured vaguely behind him without looking up from his tablet. Bruce didn’t have to ask him for clarification, taking the bundle over to an intricately carved side table and setting it out. They moved together like longtime dance partners, Tony offering Bruce a cord before he had to ask, Bruce opening Tony’s peanuts for him and shaking a few out onto a napkin when Dum-E picked them up and shook them in the air. Dum-E did his best to be in the way through the process and Steve just tried to keep out from underfoot.

“You okay?” Tony asked finally, giving Steve a sideways glance. His eyes slid from Steve’s face to his chest, and then down to his legs, where they lingered on the spare pants. “I’m guessing you’re okay since you’re here and I’m not chasing the Hulk down.”

“Fine, Tony,” Steve said, understanding that Tony wasn’t asking about the cut on his leg. “It was a good work out. We’ll need to invite him over for training drills soon.” He smiled because he meant it. The forty-five minutes he’d spent in the yard with Logan had worked the lingering anxiety out of his system, and he’d actually been enjoying himself until the quinjet’s arrival had distracted him just enough not to dodge the last swipe.

Tony nodded, his shoulders relaxing. He gave Steve a smile and then gestured to the device with his metal rod. “This is not Terran,” he said. When Steve just gave him a lifted eyebrow, he explained, “Earth. It’s not from Earth. Extraterrestrial of one variety or the other. Not from Asgard either, not like Loki’s staff, not like Thor’s hammer, not like the Tesseract. It is completely, one-hundred percent, of unknown origin.”

Before Steve could respond to the excitement buried in Tony’s voice, the door opened.

“Hank!” Bruce greeted cheerfully. “You’re back from Romania.”

“And, look, you so nicely brought Reed with you,” Tony groused, but he was quick enough to show off the alien device. He and Richards were thick as thieves in minutes, and Steve took that as his cue to quietly leave the scientists to their ‘scienceing.’ He paused by Tony’s side and leaned around him to set their lips together in a swift kiss.

“Play nice,” he said.

Tony caught him around the wrist and reeled him back in for another kiss. “Don’t I always?” he asked with a cheeky wink.


	7. Seven

Chapter Seven

Tony woke up warm in his own bed. In the three and a half months since Steve’s return, it had become a regular thing. Tony kept expecting to wake up annoyed at a night of work lost, but it hadn’t happened. Each morning he woke up feeling warm and a little crushed under Steve’s bulk, and it was basically the best thing that had ever happened to him. He stretched carefully, trying not to wake Steve up. It was rare that he woke up with Steve still snoring against his chest and not Steve tip-toeing his fingers across Tony’s collarbone.

Lifting a hand, he gently brushed Steve’s hair back from his forehead. Steve cuddled closer to Tony’s side, wrapped an arm around his waist and tugged him in, one leg slinging across Tony’s hips. He tried to be quiet about it, but Tony couldn’t help laughing. He lifted his free hand and bit into his knuckle, chest shaking as he tried to restrain the laughter. Steve grew restless at the jostling and tightened his hold, tugging until Tony was nearly buried under his bulk.

Making an adorable morning-growling noise, Steve sank his teeth into Tony’s left pectoral.

“Ow!” Tony complained through a laugh, pushing at Steve’s head.

“I was havin’ a nic’ dream,” Steve mumbled reproachfully. He scooted down the bed enough to give Tony a baleful glare from under his lashes. He yawned widely, and then brought his teeth down again on Tony’s ribs. Tony hissed at him, but he didn’t bite down, instead using his teeth as a frame for his tongue to paint a ticklish picture on Tony’s skin.

Laughing and squirming, Tony shoved at him until he stopped. Steve released him with a wet _pop_ and let his head lull back. He gave Tony a very satisfied smile and rubbed his cheek on the wet spot like a cat. Tony petted his head, carding fingers through his hair, and let him wake up. Steve’s fingers started to wander the more alert he got, tracing the scars on Tony’s chest, dancing over the ridges of his ribs like a five-legged spider, smoothing his giant palm down Tony’s hip and stroking down over his thigh.

“Do we have to get up?” Steve murmured against his stomach, sliding further down the bed.

Breath caught in his throat and body coming alive with tiny tremors, Tony said, “We better not.” He _did_ need to get up – Hank and Reed were both guests in the Tower while they worked on deciphering the half a dozen pieces of alien technology taking up space in Tony’s lab. They’d starting running an algorithm the night before that should be just about finished. It was still not enough to push him out of bed when Steve was working his way over Tony’s stomach with wet kisses and short nips.

“Right answer,” Steve murmured, slipping a finger into the waistband of Tony’s boxers and pulling them back.

“I always have the best answers,” Tony agreed with a low groan.

~*~

“I like you better when you get laid regularly,” Reed announced, apropos of nothing, later that afternoon.

Tony wouldn’t have used the word _regularly_ , as they were just starting to explore things like morning blow jobs, not for lack of enthusiasm on Steve’s part. Tony was as glad for the enthusiasm as he was that they’d gone so slow. Everything about touching Steve was comfortable, and they’d spent so many nights in the same bed that Tony didn’t usually have to wonder when he was using sex to prove he was okay and when he was actually okay.

“You should try it sometime,” he suggested instead of commenting on how he was plenty likeable regardless of the state of his love life, thankyouverymuch.

He folded his arms on the table and leaned over them, trying to make sense of the smallest of the devices. It could have been mistaken for a piece of obsidian, except that it put off enough clean energy to power the average American home for a decade. Tony still wasn’t sure if it was some kind of naturally occurring substance or created, but he was very excited about the implication. If he could figure out how to replicate it, he could replace the arc reactor with it, not to mention the impact it would have on the entire clean energy field. It could easily take the place of lithium-ion batteries, fossil fuels, coal, could eliminate the need for hydro plants, and knock most energy sources off the playing field all together. If he could just figure out where it came from.

“Oh, Sue and I have a very active sex life,” Reed replied several minutes later as if there had been no pause in the conversation, sounding distracted. “Did you see the mercury reaction?” he asked, but Tony had learned from his tone of voice that he wasn’t expecting an answer and he wouldn’t hear it even if Tony told him – _again_ – that yes, he’d seen the mercury reaction, and yes it was interesting, and he should talk to Bruce about it.

“I would prefer it,” Hank cut in, “If we did not discuss either of your sex lives, no offense to your respective partners.”

“Having trouble in the love department, McCoy?” Tony teased.

“My love life is no concern of yours,” Hank said, but then gave Tony a sideways glance and smugly added, “I do not need your assistance.”

Tony laughed. “Feel free to share details,” he prompted.

Hank made a low noise in his great chest that was not quite a growl, not quite a purr, not quite a sigh of annoyance. He shook his head, delicately adjusted his glasses, and leaned over his own project – the weird spinning top cup thing. “Running the risk of rekindling the conversation,” he said after a long moment, “I will say that you seem very happy, Tony. Happier than I have seen you in many years. If Captain Rogers is responsible, you both have my heartfelt good wishes for a long and fruitful union.”

Feeling the back of his neck flush, Tony offered Hank a quirked smile. “Thanks. But I don’t think _fruitful_ is quite the right word.”

Hank shrugged, his shoulders moving in a massive roll. “There are many ways a relationship may be fruitful other than the bearing of offspring. Happiness and growth are important products of any relationship. And both are certainly things that you deserve.”

Playful quips dying on his tongue, Tony looked up at Hank. He was studiously minding his project, doing his best to get a scraping of the surface with a tip made of a two caret diamond. He’d always liked Hank, and they’d worked together before, but he’d had no idea that Hank thought enough about him to have any opinion on his happiness, or that they saw each other often enough for the other man to have noticed one way or another.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tony managed finally.

Hank made a sound of acknowledgement and transferred the tip of his cutting tool to a microscope. He sighed. “Still nothing. This is a most baffling material.”

“I told you to wait for the goethite,” Tony remarked.

“I remember. The limpet teeth.” Hank rolled his eyes in Tony’s direction, and Tony lifted his hands in a shrug of _I told you so_.

“Take it Thor didn’t have anything useful to add?”

Hank sighed and sat back in his chair, taking his glasses off and rubbing carefully at his eyes. “He said that it was not his area of study, but offered to take it back to Asgard the next time he visits home to see if the dwarves might have something to say about it.” He gave Tony a solemn shake of his head. “Dwarves.”

“Great craftsmen. They call themselves dvergr,” he added, pronouncing the word very carefully. Thor kept promising him a trip to Asgard to meet these amazing crafters, but so far Tony had either been busy, or Thor had been rushing home on an emergency.

“I’m sure,” Hank said.

“Such disbelief from the blue furry guy,” Tony chided.

“I did not say that I didn’t _believe_ ,” he defended. “Just that the universe continues to surprise me.”

“I think this is a data storage device,” Reed interjected. He gave them both a wide eyed look. “Did I say that out loud?”

“Yes,” Tony told him patiently, abandoning his own project and hurrying around the workstations to where Reed contorted around his table.

“Oh, good. I meant to say it a while ago, but I was busy. Look.” He held the rectangular block out, pointing to a small cavity that Tony was sure hadn’t been there the day before.

“How did you get it open?” Hank asked, leaning over Tony’s shoulder to peer into the recessed cavity and the small rectangle poking out of it.

“I uh. Breathed?” Reed guessed. “To be fair, I sighed on it. Either way, this looks like it plugs into something bigger. If we can get something attached to it, we might be able to figure out what’s on it?”

“Reed,” Tony said, staring at the block. “You are a genius. I would kiss you, except I don’t want to.”

“Thank you,” Reed said wryly, “For not wanting to.”

Tony blew him a kiss instead and hurried through the lab to his workshop on the other side. He set the block on one of Jarvis’ scanners and tapped the console. “Show me what we’re working with, Jarvis, because that looks a whole lot like a USB.”

Reed and Hank had followed him in curiously and Reed crouched down to eye level to stare at the device. “I thought so, too,” he said. “It can’t be that easy.”

“It does indeed appear to be a USB, sir,” Jarvis told them. “May I suggest an isolated server? I’d rather not take ill if it can be avoided.”

“Such a germaphobe,” Tony said, but he crossed to the glass partition that separated his space from Bruce’s and rapped his knuckles on it. Bruce was in full protective gear, his hands underneath a ventilation hood, and Tony had to pound on the glass three times before Bruce finished what he was doing and stepped away from the hood.

“Kind of in the middle of something, Tony,” Bruce said, putting a gloved hand on the glass.

“We found a thing,” Tony told him excitedly. “Well, Reed found a thing, but now we’re going to plug it in and see if it’s a useful thing. I mean, who knows, could just be full of alien porn, and that could theoretically be really bad, but it also could be full of things like _hey, this is our mission statement and 401k plan._ ”

“Give me ten minutes to finish this,” Bruce interrupted before Tony could get into the long list of other things it might be, like why the hell they’d taken Steve prisoner in the first place and what the fuck they’d done to him.

Behind him, Tony heard a click and loud humming noise. “Too late, Reed already plugged it in.”

“Tony,” Bruce complained, hurrying back to his ventilation hood.

“Don’t complain to me, take it up with Richards.”

“Whatever this is,” Hank was saying at Tony hurried back to the display where Reed had plugged a USB cable into the device, “They’ve obviously found a way to integrate their technology with ours. How curious.”

Jarvis was quiet as he processed through the information, the tension in the room increasing by the minute as the display remained blank. Tony pulled a tablet over to keep an eye on what he was doing, and felt a flush of pride tempered with a touch of awe when he realized that Jarvis was writing new software to read the device. Bruce made it in before he was finished, sleeves still rolled up, glasses askew on his face.

“What did I miss?” he asked as if he were walking into a movie late.

“Well, Jarvis is doing some knock-your-socks-off amazing work, but otherwise nothing.” Tony angled himself so Bruce could see over his shoulder. Bruce wasn’t a software engineer, but he’d picked enough up from Tony over the years to give a low, appreciative whistle.

“I’m afraid this may take some time, sirs, if you would prefer to perhaps get a late lunch. It has been nearly seven hours since breakfast.”

Hank resettled his glasses on his nose and stood up, patting his stomach. “Excellent idea.”

Tony hunched protectively over his tablet, but Bruce didn’t try to take it from him as he ushered Tony out of his chair and toward the elevator.

~*~

Sam and Natasha were in the kitchen when they tromped out of the elevator, Tony still curled over his tablet muttering praise under his breath for his AI. Reed’s neck doing that super creepy stretchy thing so he could look over Tony’s shoulder while the rest of him was walking in between Bruce and Hank. Sam looked up from where he was spreading mayonnaise on slices of wheat bread, gave them a quick once-over, and reached for the loaf of bread.

“Fried bologna sandwiches,” Natasha told them. “Take it or make your own.”

“I don’t think any of them care right now,” Bruce said, detaching from Reed’s side and heading for the fridge. “I’ll make my own,” he added.

“How many of these do you want?” Sam asked. When no one responded he tore off a chunk of bologna and threw it at them. It landed on the tablet. Tony picked it off and flicked it back, wiping at the screen with his cuff.

“Best just make up the rest of the loaf,” Bruce suggested when Tony didn’t answer. “I’ll help.”

Tony heard the conversations flowing around him as a trickle of background noise, his entire attention zoomed in while Jarvis created a masterpiece of software from nothing. Even Reed’s annoying stretching fingers and neck barely pinged. Eventually, someone pried one of his hands away and put a square of food in it. He ate it mechanically, noted in the back of his head that it was _extremely_ salty, but it didn’t stop him from finishing it. When he was done with that small square, someone put another square in his hand.

“Sir,” Jarvis said after the code stopped and then flew across the screen too fast to be more than a blur. “I believe I may be able to access to device now. Would you like to return to the workshop so I may do so on the isolated server?”

Tony still had a square in his hand, and rushed out of the room without bothering to put it down. Once in the elevator, he looked down and realized that it was a quarter of a sandwich, an arc of fried bologna sticking out of one side, once melted cheese slowly solidifying. For lack of anything else to do with it, Tony stuffed it in his mouth and wiped his hand on his pants. Hank, Bruce, and Reed were all crowded around him, and he was surprised to see that Sam and Natasha had joined them as well.

“Had to see what all the fuss was about,” Sam said with a grin when he noticed Tony’s attention.

The elevator was crowded, but Reed’s ridiculous stretching came in handy as he flattened himself to the back wall and arched over them, head still curled around to look at Tony’s tablet, where Jarvis was slowly scrolling the code so Tony could review it. Jarvis had the new program downloaded onto a removable drive by the time they made it to the workshop. Reed stretched his arm all the way from the elevator to snag it and plug it into the isolated machine while the rest of them were still rushing to catch up.

The holographic display loaded green. They gathered around and stared at it for several long seconds. There was a diagram of what looked like an engine in one corner. The rest was gibberish.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tony complained.

“They weren’t going to go through all that effort to secure it and then put it in English,” Hank said reasonably. He adjusted his glasses and peered at the display.

“It’s the same code that Wasp found on the missile,” Natasha noted quietly. Tony was already pulling up the transcription of what they’d been able to see. Jarvis helpful highlighted symbols that matched.

“I knew this stupid code was going to come back to bite us.”

“Not a code,” Reed mused, his neck elongated to get his face closer to the screen. “Language.” He retracted his neck and made a pleased noise. “After all, the material is of alien origin, this must be their language.”

Tony flicked another file open. The audio Jarvis had grabbed from the security room started playing. “And it sounds like this,” he guessed with a sigh.

~*~

They were no closer to deciphering the language when the Assemble alarm blared over “Cowboys from Hell.” The sudden break in noise knocked him out of the translation matrix he was trying to build based on an assumption based on what he thought the missiles buttons had probably read and the few words on the diagram that pointed to things he recognized. Tony looked around. Hank and Reed had retreated from the workshop to escape Tony’s thinking music, and Bruce had apparently abandoned him as well.

“Jarvis, patch me into Steve’s comm.”

“Suit up, Iron Man,” Steve said without preamble.

Based on Steve calling him _Iron Man,_ he guessed that he already knew the answer, but he still asked, “Can you do this without me? We’re making progress down here.”

“Negative,” Steve responded. “Rhodey and Jan took their team out earlier and they’re half way across the country. We got the call in from Storm, looks like it’s our Black Mask friends at it again. Research facility upstate New York. Cyclops already has a team out there, but they asked for an assist.”

Tony reluctantly pushed away from the workstation. “On my way,” he said, already reaching for the undersuit. “Keep working, Jarvis, let me know as soon as you get something that makes sense.”

“Of course, sir. Don’t forget the protein bars, sir.”

U bumped into him, holding out the bot-friendly bag and rattling it slightly. Tony snagged it and peered inside – two Power Bars and some Gatorade energy chews. Tony felt blindly in the bag for the first one he could get his hands on, and started shoving blue cubes in his mouth as he hopped into the undersuit and aimed a kick for the Iron Man launching pad. It opened up, his armor lifting into position and folding open.

The quinjet had already taken off, so Tony tracked their course and locked the autopilot on while he pulled up what he could find on the research facility. Biomechanics. The first research facility the X-Men had come across had specialized in pharmaceuticals. Both facilities were hundreds or even thousands of miles from other sites where they’d had positive hits on the Black Masks.

“These guys have some varied interests,” Tony noted into the main band.

“Sounds like someone needs to pick a hobby and stick with it,” Sam agreed, obviously annoyed. Tony wasn’t sure why he wasn’t off with the rest of Rhodey’s team half-way across the country, but he was always happy to have another flier when they were heading off into unknown territory, especially considering that the Black Masks preferred to blow their toys up rather than letting them get captured.

The facility was isolated on two acres of empty field that Tony would bet his newest Lamborghini was concealing another underground base. Whoever these guys were, they obviously liked their privacy and their subterranean dwellings. The quinjet beat him to the site by two minutes and Tony kicked up the speed when he heard Clint curse.

“Do we have any way of knowing if the building was populated?” Steve asked.

Tony had mistaken the billow of smoke for a cloud in the darkness. He pulled up sharply to the jet’s port side and suppressed a curse himself. The whole thing was on fire, an explosion making the ground ripple even as Tony tried to get some kind of scan of the area. Infrared would be useless with all the heat, and the original blueprints weren’t doing any good. The research facility itself looked like it was legitimate, at least on paper. Innocent researchers could have been trapped inside.

“I’m going in,” Tony decided, diving for the side of the building with the fewest flames spouting out the windows.

“Iron Man,” Steve said, voice sharp. He hesitated, and then said, “Be careful. Report once you’re inside and leave your comms on.”

“Sure thing,” Tony said distractedly, blowing out the windows on the fourth floor. The repulsor blast pushed the flames back for a moment, but they rushed in quickly to fill the void, eating up the new supply of oxygen. Tony turned his thermal converters on- might as well suck up some energy while he was in the middle of the furnace. He crashed through the broken windows, his camera switching automatically to infrared so help him navigate through the worst of the flames. The fire was burning at an average 875 degrees Celsius, well above normal temperatures for a building fire, and Tony suspected that there was a mass of chemicals feeding the flames down below. He made it down one floor and then had to pull up sharply to avoid a sudden gout of flame burning another five percent hotter than the rest.

Despite the shielding, Tony had started to sweat. He swerved around the hottest of the flames, dodged a falling beam, and found himself in a wide central space that extended down to the ground floor and up to the roof.

“If there was anyone in here,” Tony said reluctantly, jerking to the side to avoid falling debris, “They’re not coming out of this one.” His HUD flashed at him in warning as the heat began to creep to the upper safe limits on the boot jets. “I’m getting out.”

“Copy, Iron Man. We’re in pursuit of a fleeing jet. Catch up if you can.”

Tony aimed for a weak point in the ceiling and crashed through it, repulsors firing on a continuous stream to clear the way. Softened by the roaring blaze, the concrete crumbled around him and he was out in the air again, surrounding by billowing crowds of black smoke. He could hear sirens in the distance, and took an exploratory lap around the building. To his infrared scanners, the ground around the building was red and white for a hundred yards in each direction, confirming his suspicions about the underground base. Tossing one more look back at the burning building, he took off in the quinjet’s direction – the fire suppressant he had on board wouldn’t even touch the blaze.

“Jarvis, get in contact with those first responders and tell them to clear out of the area. We don’t need a half dozen fire trucks falling in when the ground caves.”

“Yes, sir.”

When Tony caught up to the quinjet, he found it landed in a clearing with two other jets. The X-Jet had landed a little rough, but the second plane had obviously crashed or been shot down. It was nose-down in the ground, tail sticking up at 47 degrees, loading ramp open so it looked a bit like a chicken with its head stuck in the feed. Tony flipped to infrared, saw three figures moving inside, and aimed for the open back end.

“ _LOGAN_!” Scott shouted as Tony caught and patched into their band, “Stop!” Cyclops and Storm spilled out of the X-Jet, Storm holding one hand against her side.

Snarling and growling like a feral dog, Logan was obviously not stopping. Tony made it into the tail of the jet to see Logan going postal on the inside of it. He had his feet braced on the sparking navigation console and was holding one of the Black Mask guards up by the neck.

“Stop!” Tony tried, but Logan sank his claws into the man’s stomach and twisted. He was covered in blood, eyes an alien yellow, teeth bared. He sighted Tony in the opening and howled, flinging up at him with claws extended, expression a mask of fury and lust. Tony tried to back out, but Logan was on him almost before he registered what was happening. He jerked against the weight as Logan scrabbled for purchase. Luckily for Tony, he caught hold with his hands and attacked with his teeth, because the claws would have gone right through him.

Firing repulsors, Tony got them both out of the jet even as Ororo and Scott appeared over the lip. He aimed for the ground, driving Logan hard into it. The man wasn’t even fazed and started raking at Tony with his feet and claws, holding tight when Tony tried to get away.

“Hulk go nightnight!” Tony shouted.

His chest panel opened and eight darts laced with animal tranquilizer shot out point blank, nailing Logan in the chest and abdomen. He bellowed in rage, but his eyes started to droop immediately, his flailing limbs loosing coordination. Tony jerked back from him, landing hard on the ground and rolling away. The sedatives only worked on Bruce if they caught him mid-transformation, and Tony could only hope that Logan wasn’t up to shrugging off Hulk-level tranquilizers.

Clint and Natasha reached him a moment later, Natasha wasting no time straddling his chest and keying the suit releases. The faceplate snapped back, leaving Tony gasping for air. He was shaking with adrenalin, only vaguely aware of all the warning alarms going off in his helmet, the distant fire streaking across his back. Natasha grabbed his face with both hands.

“Can you get out of the suit?” she asked, locking eyes with him.

“No,” Tony wheezed, not quite getting enough air. “You’re kind of sitting on me,” he added. She stood up without taking her hands off his face and Tony ordered the suit open. Only half of it obeyed, the other half crushed or deformed by Logan’s claws. Sam dropped out of the sky a moment later; together, the three of them yanked and twisted on the stuck panels until Tony had enough room to crawl out. He collapsed back to the ground and tried to close his eyes. He felt so tired.

“Stay awake, Stark,” Natasha ordered. Without preamble, they rolled him over. Cold air hit his back and he hissed, trying to squirm away automatically. He must have been absolutely soaked in sweat. Knees landed on either side of his thighs – Clint’s, he thought- and hands held him down at the shoulders and hips.

“What the _hell_ –?” Tony demanded, but they ignored him, hands tugging at his undersuit. The sound of fabric ripping was loud in his ears.

“Superficial,” Sam pronounced with a relieved sigh. “I don’t think any of them need stitches. Going to hurt like a bitch for a few weeks though.”

“Wolverine tore right though the back of your armor,” Clint said finally.

“Christ,” Tony gasped, collapsing against the ground and taking deep breaths. Now that he _knew_ about them, he could suddenly feel them, a dozen burning lines of pain trailing from shoulder to hip. “Steve?” he asked shakily.

“He’s standing over Wolverine,” Natasha answered. “Looks like he might be ready to take his head off.”

“Let me up,” Tony demanded. When no one moved, he jerked and shoved backwards. Unseated, Clint’s weight shifted to the side just enough for Tony to get to his knees. He heard a round of protests, but rolled to his knees anyway and turned to look at the tight knot of figures surrounding Logan’s unconscious body.

Even without being able to see his face, Tony could tell from the slant of his shoulders that Steve was seconds away from a total meltdown. Scott was standing protectively over Wolverine’s body, Ororo between them with a hand on either of their chests.

“Hey!” Tony called, “In case anyone cares, I’m just fine.”

It got enough of Steve’s attention to break the immediate tension. Casting a vicious glare at Scott, he abandoned his post and jogged the few steps to Tony’s side, going down on one knee with his shield held up protectively. “I’m sorry, I had to make sure he wasn’t going to get up and come after you again,” Steve said softly, voice breaking. He cleared his throat automatically, looking away from Tony. His face was streaked with soot, eyes so wide that Tony could see whites all the way around.

“I’m fine,” Tony said, reaching up to grab Steve’s shoulder. He flinched as the motion pulled on the cuts. “Where’s Bruce?” he asked to deflect the mounting panic he could see in Steve’s eyes.

Steve glanced over to the woods beyond the quinjet. “Calming down. We don’t exactly have another Hulk go nightnight on hand,” he said, quirking a nervous smile.

“Good, that’s good. I’m going to need some attention here soon.”

“I know I’m pretty,” Sam said, kneeling behind him, “But I’m here for more than just my good looks. I’m going to cut your undersuit away.”

Even with the warning, Tony still flinched when the fabric lifted stickily away from his skin. He tightened his hold on Steve, and Steve shifted forward so Tony could rest his head on his shoulder, reaching down to help Sam cut the top of the undersuit away from the waistband in front, and helping Tony pull the sleeves off. Cold liquid splashed over his back. Tony hissed, shivering at the temperature on his heated flesh. His stomach gave an uncertain lurch in response and he held his breath until the wave of nausea passed. Sam mopped gently at his back, hands working over the cuts.

“You’re one lucky man,” Sam said, “Don’t even think we need the glue. I’m just going to get everything nice and clean and bandage you up, alright? Try to stay still.”

“Sure,” Tony said into Steve’s neck, and decidedly did not think of how far those claws would have dug into his spine if the suit hadn’t been in the way. With the shield on one side and his face tucked into Steve’s neck, he felt surprisingly cozy. It would have been better without Sam smearing antiseptic ointment all over his back, but details, details.  “Anyone know who hit Wolverine with the psycho stick this morning?” he asked.

“He went nuts when we went down,” Scott answered from a safe distance, “Was out of the jet before we even hit the ground.”

“I doubt that’s the first plane crash he’s been in,” Sam muttered with a definite bite in his voice. “What the hell set him off like that this time?”

“Why don’t we ask him when he wakes up?” Tony suggested. Sam moved his arms so he could wrap gauze around his chest, pulling it just snuggly enough to stay on.

They heard groaning from Logan’s direction as Sam packed up the medkit. Natasha offered Tony a white t-shirt with a SHIELD logo on the breast. “First one I saw,” she defended at Tony’s look.

“That’s one of mine, so don’t bleed all over it,” Clint ordered, but he helped Tony ease it down over his bandages. It was predictably gigantic on him. He was surrounded by assholes with gigantic pects.

Steve helped him to his feet only when it became apparently that Tony was going to get up with or without assistance, steadying him carefully by the arm. Logan was starting to stir, Scott still standing wary guard over him, his attention obviously on Steve.

“Anyb’dy get the numba’ on tha’ truck?” Logan slurred, running a hand clumsily over his face. He looked up at them, expression growing more and more confused as the moment stretched and no one responded.  He rolled over to hands and knees and Scott reached down to help him to his feet. Logan leaned on him woozily.

“The heck’s goin’ on, Cyke?” he mumbled.

“Do you have no memory of the crash?” Ororo asked carefully. She kept her eyes on Steve, who had passed Tony off to Clint and inched forward. Tony tried to reach out to him, but he was feeling woozy himself. Natasha did it for him, putting one hand on Steve’s arm. He didn’t shrug it away, but he didn’t step back either. His eyes were narrowed suspiciously, lips turned in, head tilted slightly to the side like he was trying to puzzle something out.

“Just the alarms goin’ wild,” Logan said. He craned his neck to look at the downed jets, and then scanned the rest of the clearing, eyes lighting briefly on Tony’s mangled armor, and then on Tony himself.

Tony heard a low, rumbling growl. He looked to Logan, but realized belatedly that the sound was coming from _Steve_. It was an animal noise, nothing that a human throat should be able to manage. The growl lifted to a spitting hiss and then Steve was gone, charging across the clearing at top speed. Natasha and Sam chased after him, Ororo lifting her hands to get the wind kicked up. Steve flung his shield, smacking Ororo in one arm and Scott on the chest before stooping to snag it off the ground. He barreled into them, knocking Logan out of Scott’s arms and going after him with the shield tucked in tight to his chest, the way he held it in close combat.

“What the hell is he doing?” Tony demanded. He tried to move forward by Clint stopped him with a hand on his chest.

Sam lifted into the air and slammed into Steve feet-first, sending him tumbling off Logan’s prone form. Shaking off the last of the tranquilizer, Logan rolled up to his feet and knocked Sam aside, falling on Steve with his claws out. Steve rolled out of the way, brought both feet up and kicked him hard in the chest. Obviously still weakened, Logan stumbled backwards, ripping the tranquilizer darts out and snarling as Steve flipped back to his feet.

Natasha tried to get in between them, but Ororo had wind singing through the clearing fast enough to make the trees creak. Fighting against the current, Natasha wasn’t able to catch Steve as he darted around her and let Ororo’s winds fling him straight at Wolverine’s chest. Adamantium struck vibranium and they tumbled apart, and then shot back together.

Clint shifted. Tony didn’t realize that he’d chucked a thin dagger at Scott until the pommel hit him on the temple. He stilled with his hand still lifted to the shutter on his visor, looking for an opportunity to open up on Steve.

“ _Don’t,_ ” Clint warned, keeping a firm hold on Tony with one hand and pointing at Scott with the other. “They’re not going to be able to kill each other, let them duke it out. Any of us get in the way and someone is going to get really hurt.”

Scott’s jaw clenched, lips pursing, but he slowly lowered his hand from his visor and put it on Ororo’s arm. She gave him a hard look, but cut her hands across her body. The winds died out enough for Clint to shout at Natasha and Sam to withdraw. Tony shifted his weight again, feeling slow and hazy (definitely hit the head on the way down, bad freaking timing), but Clint’s hand was back on his chest a moment later. They watched helplessly as Steve and Logan went at each other. Tony grew more and more alarmed as the seconds passed – Steve had a certain dancelike fluidity to his motions when he was sparring that was absent. This was real combat, no punches pulled. Logan didn’t seem like he was going any easier, driving at Steve with punches that would have skewered him if they’d landed.

“Steve!” Tony shouted. Expanding his chest made the cut sting and pull against the bandages, but he took in another deep breath and tried again, “Steve, _stop!_ ”

Ignoring him, Steve grabbed Logan’s wrist and brought the edge of the shield down hard. The crack of bone was audible across the clearing, but Steve didn’t stop at Logan’s howl of pain. He smashed the flat of the shield into Logan’s face, and then did it again when Wolverine faltered.

“He’s gonna kill him,” Clint breathed in dawning realization. Scott and Ororo seemed to realize the same thing and Scott shot a hand to his visor. He fired two quick bursts near Steve’s feet – Steve danced out of the way and turned to put Logan in between them. Arms held out from her sides, Ororo lifted into the air as the sky started to swirl with dark clouds.

Tony broke away from Clint’s hold and stumbled forward, vision swimming. “Captain Rogers!” he shouted. “Avenger, stop!”

With a warcry of a shout, Steve smashed the shield into Logan’s chest, sending him down to the ground. Logan bounced once and lay still. Tony halted and called out again, sure that Steve would stop, but Steve just lifted the shield above his head, and Tony knew he was too far away to stop him.

Everything fell into slow motion. Logan’s face twisted in a snarl, Steve’s knees bent to jump, prepared to deliver an executioner’s blow. Tony heard himself screaming Steve’s name, felt his feet moving under him, saw Sam and Natasha running for their teammate, felt an arrow as it _whooshed_ past his right arm. All of it was distant, data, input.

Logan’s face seemed to shift and blur, his snarl distorting his features even further, and he turned… green. Shock drove Tony to a messy stop that nearly pitched him over. Steve shifted at the last second to deflect Clint’s arrow, leaving himself open for Sam to drive right into his chest. In the time it took Steve and Sam to hit the ground, a leather-faced green horror lay where Logan had been. With a guttural snarl, he shoved himself up and leapt on the tangled pile of flying limbs and wings next to him, teeth aiming for Sam’s neck.

Two arrows _thunk-thunked_ into the creature’s side. He screamed, but didn’t let go, clawing at Sam’s wingpack to get to this throat. Trapped underneath them, Steve struggled to punch over Sam’s shoulder, and Tony was moving again, the fire of his injured back completely forgotten. Natasha was two steps ahead of him; she leapt onto the pile, driving a pair of thin-bladed knives into Logan’s back. He screamed, shrill like an animal, and flung her away. It was just enough space for Steve to get his feet under Sam’s hips and kick them both off. Sam twisted, his jet’s flaring, and drove the creature into the ground hard enough to make something crack. Howling, Logan shoved him away and jumped for Steve again, Natasha’s knives still stuck in his upper back to the hilt. Sam lashed out with a foot to trip him, earning himself a sharp kick to the side that made him grunt in pain.

And Steve. _Changed_. Tony jerked to a halt within touching distance as the same transformation that had taken Logan took Steve, and two overgrown green bats faced off, spitting and hissing.

“What the _fuck_ is going on?!” Clint demanded as Tony back peddled to get out from between them.

Logan took a swipe at Sam, who was staring up at the Steve in slack jawed horror. Steve kicked Logan’s claws – actual claws, not the familiar adamantium spikes – away and leapt on him once more. They rolled into a ball of claws and teeth, kicking and biting, Steve’s shield forgotten on the ground. They sounded like dogs fighting, all high snarls and growls. It was a terrifyingly primal sound that made the hair on Tony’s arms stand upright and his stomach twist up under his ribcage.

Natasha was the first to recover from the shock. She opened up with her widow’s bite, throwing half a dozen sparking discs at them. They both shrugged it off, barely seeming to notice the electricity. Tony turned, pressed into his wrist, calling for the Mark XI and ran for the quinjet. The sky opened up before he was half way across the clearing, dumping buckets of rain so hard and fast that he could barely see the jet’s outline through it. Tony cursed, slipped in a puddle, and scrambled back to his feet. He made it into the loading bay mostly on all fours and ran for the weapon’s rack, slicking water off his face.

Bypassing the standard guns, he swept up a Nightnight Rifle, thank you Fitzsimmons, and scrambled back out into the cacophony of rain and shouts. The water didn’t seem to have deterred the two creatures at all, and they kept dodging lightning strikes while trying to push the other into them. Tony planted himself and tried to get a clean shot through the deluge, but they were moving too fast and visibility was too poor. He shot wildly into the mess of flailing limbs, but if he hit, neither of them noticed.

“ _Cut the water, Storm!”_ Scott screamed.

Like closing a door, the rain stopped. Tony fired again with his sightlines clear, nailing the Logan-creature in the chest. He stumbled, and the Steve-creature caught him in a blood choke.

“Give up!” Steve shouted, and _Jesus Christ_ , it was still Steve’s voice. “You’re beaten, give up!”

“ _Traitor,_ ” the other creature gurgled with nothing of Logan’s voice remaining, “ _You will never stop the invasion!_ ”

It sounded just the same as every fanatic who’d shouted _Hail, Hydra!_ before biting down on a false tooth. Tony jerked the gun back to his shoulder, but was too late. The alien opened his mouth wide, slammed it shut, and immediately started to convulse. He was dead against Steve’s chest before Tony had even sighted the gun.

“Damnit!” Steve snapped, pushing him away. He shoved himself up to his feet and ran a hand roughly over his head. And then stopped. He turned both hands over and stared down at his palms – fat green fingers with vicious black claws extending from his gloves. “What is…?” He turned them over again, shaking now, and then felt at his face. “What…? He started to hyperventilate, eyes wide. Still blue, still Steve’s eyes. He locked gazes with Tony and must have seen his own horror reflected back at him, because he started to scream.

Tony had never heard such a horrible sound before, not quite human, but too human not to slice into his ribcage. Steve staggered backwards, tripped on the other creature’s body and went down in the mud. He scrambled back from it, mouth still open and howling in horror. Feeling sick and numb, Tony brought the gun back to his shoulder and shot three rounds right into Steve’s torso. He went down like a sack of bricks, the horrible screaming finally quiet.


	8. Eight

Chapter Eight

Tony felt his breath against his lips. They were painfully dry. There was a cut in one corner that throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He knew that he was injured, but he couldn’t feel the blaze of the wounds on his back over the gentle rush of his own breath, the pulsing of that tiny cut. He still had the Nightnight rifle against his cheek, could still smell the mixture of metal, gun oil, and the odd ozone smell of its discharge. The clearing was a muddy mess, and they all stood there in the midst of it like misplaced lawn ornaments.

Fifteen breaths. Tony lowered the gun from his shoulder, felt the pressure release where he’d been holding it too tight – there would be a bruise. Rookie move, he knew better than that, Dad had taught him how to hold a weapon better than that. The Mark XI landed next to him, peeled open so he could step inside.  He pulled the sling over his shoulders, and let the rifle fall against his chest. It scraped against one of the cuts and forced a short bark of pain out of his lungs.

Suddenly, everything clicked into place. Sounds came back to him, the buzz of insects, the rush of air. Ororo was on the ground at Logan’s side, Sam and Natasha were hovering over Steve. It was Steve again, his familiar face lax like it was every night in sleep. Something. Something had been done to him. Rage tried to rush into the strange numb space in his chest, but he shoved it away. There would be time for that later.

“Get him into the jet,” he ordered, putting on his Team Leader Voice™. He turned to Scott, who was staring down at Logan – not Logan, still the creature he’d turned into – with a blank look on his face. “Cyclops, I’d like you all to come to SHIELD HQ with me so we can figure out what’s going on,” he said, walking that line between gentle and commanding that was usually Steve’s shtick. “All three of you,” he added.

Scott jerked and then he looked at Tony, lips slightly parted. Maybe he could feel his breath too, the split on his upper lip that was already starting to swell. He nodded finally, squared his shoulders, and then nodded again, more decisively. Nudging Ororo gently out of the way, he leaned down and scooped the unfamiliar form up in his arms, face set in an impassive mask. Sam and Natasha passed him with Steve held between them, his head lulled against Sam’s shoulder.

“Barton, go find Bruce.  Hopefully he’s still in a Bruce-sized package. I’m calling this in to Fury. The helicarrier is probably a better idea than the Tower.” Thankfully, Clint didn’t say anything about how rare it was for Tony to willingly invite SHIELD to play in their sandbox. This was something they needed a few objective eyes on. Tony stripped the gun off and stepped into his armor, ignoring the throb of the wounds touching the back padding. “Jarvis, set up an encrypted line and get Fury out of bed.”

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis said. He hadn’t sounded so bewildered and bereft since the night Peggy died.

~*~

Swimming through murky water, Steve slowly rose back to consciousness. He was on the medbed, staring up at the sparkly pink unicorn stickers Clint had put on the ceiling not long after the jet was built. He remembered walking into the just-finished jet and quirking an eyebrow at Clint, standing on the bed with a packet of stickers in his mouth and the ceiling halfway decorated.

 _“Um… fhis is precisewy what it wooks wike,”_ Clint had told him, muffled by the plastic stuffed between his teeth.

_“Why is it what it looks like?”_

Clint had put up one more sticker on the ceiling and spit the rest out of his mouth. _“Because no one likes staring up at boring ceiling when they’re hurt. The unicorns were on sale!”_ he’d defended without Steve saying anything. Neither of them had mentioned where the stickers came from when Tony asked, and no one had tried to take them down.

He felt a floating kind of distance from the memory, watching an old film on a shiny new TV. With the building inevitability of a bubble rushing for the surface, Steve realized that the memory wasn’t really his. But it was his, because he’d been there. Hadn’t he?

“Steve?”

Steve tore his eyes away from the stickers and rolled his head over to look at Bruce. Bruce, who he’d met for the first time on the helicarrier, hadn’t he? But the memory of him in this medbay, tapping his fingers restlessly on the bottom of a tablet was brighter, more _his_. Shouldn’t it be that way? It was more recent. Somehow, it was different. He felt like he was caught in that liminal space between takeoff and reaching altitude, where the pressure was just strong enough to be felt, not strong enough to make his ears pop. Bubbles in the water.

“Steve, look at me.”

He met Bruce’s gaze. Bruce offered him a shaky smile, tapped his fingers on the bottom of his tablet and asked, “Do you remember anything?”

He remembered a lot of things. Steve cocked his head curiously.

“About the fight with Logan?” Bruce asked hesitantly.

It slammed into him like a train on icy tracks, like hitting the ice nose-down, like cold water splashing over him until his skin burned. Wolverine tearing at Tony, opening his suit like it was made of butter, seeing Iron Man slip sideways and lay still in the grass, Logan’s eyes lighting on the ruined armor, on Tony’s bruised face.

Not Logan’s eyes. Something else, something he recognized but couldn’t explain, an earthy-sweet scent in the air, something that called to him, something that said, _I am one of you,_ but he wasn’t. Steve wasn’t. They weren’t the same. They weren’t. They… film reels played in reverse, all soft yellow light. Taking.

He’d felt guilty, hadn’t he?

“Steve, it’s okay, we’re going to find out what happened.”

“Bruce,” Steve interrupted. Terrible calm descended on his shoulders with the weight of knowing _something_ but not know how. He knew it the way he would have always known that he was human. Male. That even waking up without a shred of memory, he would have been able to recognize these things. Except that he wasn’t either of those things, and he knew that too without knowing why. “Bruce, restrain me.”

“Steve, I don’t think that’s necessary –”

“I don’t think…” He looked up at his friend’s concerned face. Steve’s friend. “Bruce, I don’t think I’m Steve Rogers.”

~*~

The helicarrrier was over the Indian Ocean. It was a long flight, even in the quinjet. With Storm, Cyclops, and Wolverine’s deformed body on board, it was crowded. Tony chose to fly alongside instead of sitting on one of the benches, starring at the twisted creature Wolverine had turned into, thinking of the twisted creature Steve had turned into. Jarvis had control of the suit, locked into the quinjet’s path at rest-relative, so it seemed like neither of them were moving. That the world was moving underneath them instead, conveying them neatly to their destination. How convenient.

“He says he’s not human,” Bruce said very softly.

Tony swallowed hard. Not thinking about that. Nope, bottle that up and put it somewhere that wouldn’t lead to him tearing a hole in the quinjet’s hull. His voice was even, steady. “Why would he say that?”

“He’s confused?” Bruce suggested hesitantly.

“Does he seem like he’s confused?” This wasn’t Steve they were talking about it, not his Steve. He had no personal stake in the conversation.

“No.” Bruce made a small, distressed noise. “No, he doesn’t.”

“The other –. Logan. The body?” Tony managed, getting the words jumbled. Bad connection. It was fine.

Bruce sighed. The HUD loaded up what little Bruce had been able to do with the quinjet’s limited resources. “Not human,” Bruce said, “Big surprise, all things considered. There’s human DNA there, though. Definitely.”

“So. It could really be our foul-tempered, claw-happy friend on the table. Mutated? Even more, I mean.”

“This isn’t my area of expertise, Tony. I don’t want to make any guesses. Not with this – not with.” He stopped and took a breath, and then another. Tony recognized the pattern, knew that Bruce would have his eyes closed, lips parted, tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth. “He asked me to restrain him, Tony.”

“Sounds like the kind of thing a super soldier who knows we have nothing that can hold him would say,” Tony replied automatically. It did sound like something Steve would say. Worried about hurting his team. It would be fine. They would figure it out, turn him back. This probably wasn’t even the weirdest thing that had ever happened to them.

“I want Hank to do his own tests. This is his field, and I want to be sure.”

“Of course, Big B.” Tony dismissed the display. Steve’s blood test had come back normal. That was more worrying than if he’d come back with some slimy green nasty clinging to his blood cells with its tongue sticking out, singing _na-na-na-na!_ “I already called Xavier. The professor himself will meet us at the carrier as soon as he can. He’s bringing Hank and Reed with him, lucky us. The rest of our people are on the way.”

“Good,” Bruce said. He took another of those slow, hollow-sounding breaths. “I have a feeling this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, Tony.”

“Tell me things I don’t know, Sweet Pea. Love you, but gotta go. Fury’s on the other line.”

Bruce probably knew he was bullshitting. He still let Tony go with only his customary order to stay safe.

The rest of the flight was long, and slow, and too quiet. He thought about music. Metallica sounded like a good choice for drowning out his own thoughts, but he never quite made the step of turning it on. He went through the possibilities instead, because there was only so much _bottle-up-and-think-about-never_ he could do. He was an engineer, a fixer, a futurist – he didn’t ignore problems. He was also the leader of an Avenger team, and his co-leader had just transformed into a giant, spitting, flightless bat.

The first, and best option was that the Black Masks had done something to him. Tony had always known that something had been done to Steve – they’d had their grubby hands on him for nine weeks, and no one captured a super soldier just to strip him naked and leave him alone in the dark. Best money had been on trying to replicate the serum. He didn’t think that even he could have spun a _What If?_ that resulted in ‘Captain America Now Turns into B-Movie Monster When Angry.”

Maybe it should have. Maybe whatever the Black Masks had done while experimenting with the serum had triggered some kind of Hulk? If not for Wolverine, it would have been Most Likely Scenario #1. How likely was it that Wolverine had a Hulk inside of him that wasn’t Wolverin’s own gigantic ego? How likely was it that Wolverine’s Hulk looked like Steve’s Hulk?

Not very. If Logan had a Hulk, it would be a great big slobbering beast with sideburns and a mouthful of sharp teeth.

Hulk Out was probably off the list, green-ness aside.

Some kind of mutation? Logan was already a mutant – further mutation of the mutant gene might lead to some kind of transformative ability. Other mutants could. Mystique came to mind. The first time the X-Men encountered the Black Masks, they were experimenting on mutant kids. Maybe.

How did that fit Steve? The serum was a kind of mutation, or at least a series of mutations. It didn’t read the same way on paper, but it was functionally the same. If they’d managed to destabilize the serum, maybe it could have led to this monster.  

He was back to the problem of it being the same monster when Logan and Steve’s ‘mutations’ were not the same. The likelihood of generating thee same combination of mutations in two completely different subjects who were both technically _perfect_ and capable of repairing nigh-on any damage done to them was less than nil. He tried to ignore the biggest glaring hole in the theory, but it just kept nibbling at his toes: Logan had never been captured by the Black Masks.

He was just running himself in circles to avoid what was looming up as Most Likely, flashing in his head brighter and bigger the longer he tried not to see it, the scream for his attention getting louder the more he tried to drown it out.

_He said he’s not human._

~*~

Tony put on a burst of speed when they were within sight of the helicarrier, bypassed the SHIELD agent oh-so-helpfully waving orange batons at him to land on the helicopter pad, and dropped down on the forward observational deck instead. His roguish behavior had obviously become predictable, because Maria Hill met him just inside the door.

“We’ve set you up in a lab,” she said without preamble. “Dr.’s McCoy and Richards are en route and will join you in three hours. A sterile autopsy bay has been set up to examine and contain the 0-8-4’s body, and an observational room is ready for Captain Rogers.”

Wolverine was an 0-8-4. Steve was still ‘Captain Rogers.’ Tony grit his teeth until they slipped and ground painfully. He worked his jaw, shuddering at the sensation.

“Fine, good,” he managed instead of screaming that it was _STEVE_.

“Let us know what you need and we’ll get it for you. The Director is wrapping his business up and we’ll be headed for open waters by tomorrow morning.”

“Sure, sounds like a good idea.” Just in case Wolverine become a zombie green bat creature. Just in case Steve Hulked out again. Just in case Steve wasn’t Steve. Tony stumbled on the first step down to the hangar bay. He ignored Maria’s glance, adjusted his stride. Stairs were always a tiny bit difficult in the armor. The boots were too big for most standard stairs. Happened all the time.

They waited on the catwalk as the quinjet powered down engines and the loading ramp lowered. Scott came out first with Wolverine’s body held against his chest. A SHIELD team in biohazard gear waited for him at the bottom of the ramp with an isolation chamber on a gurney. They clattered the gurney up to him and rushed him – just protocol, secure the 0-8-4 and potential bio hazard. Scott took a step back, hands tightening on the corpse. Ororo set a gentle hand on his shoulder and he nodded once, shortly, and released the body to the SHIELD techs. They took more care with it than Tony thought they would have if not for the pair of obviously-upset superpowered mutants watching over them. The gurney was rolled to the side while the got it sealed and strapped down.

Scott and Ororo stepped off the ramp. Clint and Natasha appeared at the top, flanking Steve. He had thick titanium alloy cuffs on that sealed his arms together from elbow to wrist. He’d been forced to put his joined wrists up by his ears to accommodate his chest, and the sight made Tony sick. Tony took an aborted step forward, already drawing in the breath to shout at Clint and Natasha for being stupid – this was _Steve_ , they didn’t need to treat him like some superpowered criminal.

Steve’s eyes flickered over the SHIELD team, caught sight of Logan’s body. The cuffs tore apart and that horrible monster flashed across his features again. The breath Tony had taken to shout caught in his throat and turned into a strangled noise even as Clint and Natasha leapt aside, Nightnight rifles raised.

As if just noticing that he’d broken the cuffs, Steve’s looked down, saw his deformed hands, and started screaming again. He clawed at his face, howling in such horrified pain that Tony stumbled back half a step, one hand reaching up to clutch his chest and hitting the chestplate instead. Shots rang out, four quick cracks from the Nightnight rifles, and Steve crumpled to the ramp and pitched down it. Thumpthumpthump, rolling to the concrete floor.

Tony turned and fled. He heard Maria calling for him, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t _breathe_. His eyes were burning and his mouth was open and he could feel his breath on his lips, that annoying goddamned cut, but he couldn’t get any air past whatever was squeezing his throat shut. SHIELD agents jumped out of his way as he ran blindly down the corridors, lost, and he shouldn’t be lost, goddamnit, he’d built half the fucking airship, too small, he’d built it too small, _Jesus Christ_ he was going to suffocate in his own goddamned armor because he hadn’t just built the fucking corridors so they made a little bit more goddamned sense!

He turned a corner, finally found a bathroom, and shoved it open. An agent standing at the mirror to fix her lipstick jumped and pulled a weapon on him out of reflex.

“OUT!” Tony shouted, raised his voice, saw the fear on her face like it had been on his own all those dinners, and where was his mother to calm the rage now?

The woman scrambled out of the room. Tony fumbled the lock home and tumbled out of the suit. He hit the tile knees first, heaving and gasping for air, his stomach twisting and pulling and rolling sideways. He barely made it to the toilet before the swirling, screaming _getoutgetoutgetout_ overwhelmed him. It burned past the thing squeezing his throat, sucked his ribs in and tried to pulled them out through his mouth, and then let him go. He managed to get in one gasping breath that forced his ribs back into position, and then it started all over again. Rinse, repeat.

He wasn’t sure how long it went on, but eventually he was aware of the sound of animal keening, his own voice echoing off the walls, yelling accusations back at him. He gagged again, heaved, but nothing came up. He stayed like that for several minutes, alternately gagging on his breath and pouring it out in messy sobs. His nose felt like it had been broken, his cheeks were hot, sinuses swollen, eyes ready to pop right out of their sockets.

 _Man up,_ Howard’s voice said somewhere in the back of his head, _Stop blubbering like a girl._

_Fuck you._

Tony did eventually stop, but not because Howard had said so. He’d just run out of resources. Insufficient energy to complete necessary tasks. He pulled in several shuddering breaths. How had a day that had stared out so nice ended up with him leaning over a SHIELD toilet? The memory of waking up with Steve’s head on his chest pulled a ragged moan out of him.

 _He said he wasn’t human_.

“Failure,” he told his hands. “Brought home the wrong super soldier, fucking fuckup.” Dad might have failed to bring Steve home, but at least he hadn’t brought the wrong Steve home.

Three and half months, nine weeks more. He’d left Steve in some alien creep’s hands for almost six months while happily fucking his lookalike. Hadn’t even noticed because he was too blinded by something he’d wanted for too long to say no, to examine it for flaws – selfish, useless, failure, _failurefailurefailure._

He gagged again and dry heaved until he was thrashing for oxygen, and then collapsed against the stall wall, panting for breath and trying to stop shaking.

_Would you be angry if I said I loved you?_

He’d left Steve in alien hands for six months because he’d been too obvious. They’d gotten him at his most vulnerable point, and he’d let them do it.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Tony gasped out against the metal partition. “I’m so sorry.”

~*~

Tony took a stab at Bruce’s favorite breathing exercise. Press the flat of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. In through the nose four seconds. Out through the mouth eight seconds. Repeat. Repeat.

He felt hung over.

He wanted a drink.

In through the mouth. 1.2.3.4.

No. In through the _nose_. 1.2.3.4.

Out through the mouth. 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.

Hollow breaths, expanding the lungs, pushing the ribs out. The sting of the open wounds on his back grounded him. He washed his hands a dozen times, scrubbing at the blood under his nails, trying in vain to banish the ozone smell from his skin. He patted carefully at the bruise forming around his right eye, prodded at the tiny cut in the corner of his lips. The suit had a small kit of essentials taking up precious real estate on the belt. He finger brushed his teeth, swished the contents of a packet of mouthwash, and swallowed four Ibuprofen. He dabbed arnica on his bruise, and Vaseline on the cut with practiced taps of his ring finger.

Tony paused, staring at himself. He used to carry make up with him everywhere – concealer, powder, color for his cheeks and lips, mascara and eyeliner when he especially wanted to tick Howard off. He started to laugh, tried to stifle it, and had to brace his hands on the counter to keep himself upright. The laugh built in his chest until it sounded like he was choking to keep it in. Who would have thought that sullen kid he’d been would be found in a SHIELD ladies’ room with a black eye and a split lip?

He got himself under control slowly, ran damp hands through his hair and pronounced it good enough.

“Jarvis? Duckling mode,” he commanded. The suit sealed up and clunked over to stand behind him. He unlocked the door and stepped out, hand fumbling for a pocket that wasn’t there. Not only was he in public with a black eye and a split lip and no make up to make it all better, but he was in half of the undersuit, the high-tech equivalent of slippers, and a SHIELD t-shirt that he might have borrowed from a pro-wrestler. He snorted another unsteady laugh as the armor trailed out behind him and politely closed the door.

He wasn’t surprised to find Natasha waiting for him. He _was_ surprised to see her on the floor against the wall, knees tucked up against her chest, fingers plucking restlessly at her pant cuff. Tony noted, uselessly, that her nail polish was chipped. The hall was otherwise empty. Tony leaned back against the wall with a soft sigh, still wishing he had a pocket of some kind. He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Was I hogging the bathroom? Gonna tell dad on me?” The words were out of his mouth before he could call them back. He froze, and she did too.

“He won’t talk to anyone,” she said very softly. “We had to restrain him in an interrogation room to stop him from hurting himself. We’ve had to tranq him three times now.”

Tony’s stomach gave an unsteady lurch. Aftershocks, maybe. Or maybe he’d been too optimistic in leaving the bathroom.

“We need him to talk, Stark,” she said, looking up at him.

“Back to Stark now,” Tony observed. She winced and looked away. Tony pulled in air until he couldn’t fit anymore, and then let it go. She was hurting as much as he was. She’d found him in that godforsaken frozen landscape. “I’ll talk to him,” he said, and offered her a hand.

She let him pull her up, handing him the bottle of water that had been pressed in between her stomach and thighs in the process. It was lukewarm, but Tony took it gratefully and guzzled half of it before pausing to offer it to her. She waved him off and he finished it up. For lack of a recycle bin, he handed it the armor and watched as Jarvis crushed it into a conveniently palm-sized ball. If they were attacked, Tony could throw at someone for effect. Bruce could lecture him about plastic waste afterward.

He shoved down another inappropriate laugh and gestured for Natasha to lead the way. They didn’t talk as they moved through the halls, more recognizable now. They made perfect sense, except where SHIELD had decided to paint them all monotonous, boring gray. Tony designed them to be different colors going different directions (all beautifully coordinated, thank you, Pepper), but Fury hadn’t liked it messing up his mysterious black-on-gray vibe. No wonder Tony had gotten lost.

They were keeping Steve in the Killbox. Tony stopped a dozen feet from the door and stared at it in disbelief. It was an interrogation cell built for people who could tear through bullet-proof glass, people who might need to be sedated or otherwise put down if they got loose and went on a rampage. The room was completely airtight, independently pressurized, vented so gas could be pumped in, or air pulled out.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Natasha said.

“You can’t keep him in there!” Tony hissed, turning away from the guards standing on either side of the door and crowding Natasha back against the armor. “It still might be _Steve_ , what the hell, Nat?”

Her jaw went tight, eyes going flinty. “And it might _not_ be Steve. We don’t know what’s going – all we know is that he’s turned into something else _twice_ , and he was strong enough to take Wolverine down. If he’s still Steve and something’s been.” She stopped and jerked in a breath, liquid gathering on the lip of her eyes. Her lips pursed “Something’s been done to him, there’s no other room in the helicarrier that could hold him. He could probably even get out of that if the mood took him,” she added, muttering.

Tony wanted to be angry at her, but he knew it wasn’t her fault. None of it was. If it was anyone’s fault, it was Tony’s. He’d spent the most time with Steve since they got him back, he should have something was wrong. He noticed that Natasha’s shoulders were tightening, her hands held open, ready to grab a weapon if she needed it. Horrified, Tony stepped back to let her get out from between him and the armor. She didn’t move, but her shoulders relaxed, hands easing down to her sides once more.

Scratching roughly at his neck, Tony said, “ _Fine._ Duckling on Mamma Spider, Jarvis.”

Swallowing hard and trying to keep a lid on his temper, he approached the door – it was guarded by four specialists in riot gear. They looked unnervingly like the Black Masks guards with the tinted face shields. One keyed the door open for him, and he stepped into the airlock. The door closed with a deep _boom_ and the hiss of a pressured, and then the green light above it turned red. The room beyond was simple, a rectangular riff off the Hulk’s room. The only furniture was a table and single chair. All Tony could see of Steve was his hands where he’d been shackled to the wall.

Maybe not Steve.

Tony glanced up at the camera in the corner of the airlock and nodded. The light above the interior door turned green. It slid open with a soft hum. He’d meant to move around the table, but stopped at the corner, keeping it half between him and Steve. He wasn’t sure how to react, and he needed the space in between them.

Steve had been taken out of his bloody uniform and put in a pair of eggshell blue scrubs. They were too short for him in the leg, and they obviously hadn’t been prepared for someone with his chest measurement, because the top clung to him like a second skin, the sleeves bunching up around his shoulders. His arms were held so high up that he had to curve his neck to fit his head between them. He didn’t seem to care one way or another, his head lulled against his right arm, eyes glazed.

He looked small. Vulnerable, and in so much pain. Tony wasn’t sure if he wanted to drop to his knees and take Steve into his arms, or go back to his bathroom. He made his own face be still.

“Cap?”

Steve’s eyes flickered over to him, and then lit up – first in recognition, and then in something like terror. “Tony.”

The first response that came to mind, stupidly was, _that’s my name, don’t wear it out._ He sucked the words back and settled for, “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve sobbed out, eyes shining in the florescent lights. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

“Okay,” Tony hurried to interrupt. He tapped his fingers on the table. Don’t react. He’d been in emotionally trying situations where he couldn’t let himself respond before. This was not new territory. “Okay,” he said again. “Steve, you need to talk to me. Do you know what’s going on?”

“Yes,” Steve moaned. He pulled lightly against the cuffs, his chest arching up off the wall, face twisting in deep agony. “I don’t. Tony, please. I didn’t know. I still don’t… understand. I just. I just know that I’m not…” He gagged, swallowed, and twisted side-to-side, right foot curling protectively over his left.

“Jesus.” Tony took a step back, breath coming in faster. “Get these cuffs off,” he said, directing his attention up the domed camera in the ceiling.

“No!” Steve cried. He looked wildly up at the ceiling. “No. Tony… I don’t want to hurt anyone. That’s why I asked to be put in here.”

“This was _your_ idea?”

Steve quirked a mirthless smile at him, eyes still wet. “I don’t think I could get out of here before the oxygen gets vented out the room. If I… change, again, Tony… You have to leave.”

Crossing one arm over his stomach and bracing his opposite elbow against it, Tony pressed hard at his eyes. “Okay, step back. No one is going to be _asphyxiating you._ Just… tell me what you think happened. I have to know, or I can’t fix it. Work with me, Steve. Please. Please.”

Steve nodded, blinked away the tears and took a deep breath. He found one of those blank soldier faces, did a much better job than Tony was managing. “I don’t know how, or how I know, but…” He let out a rushed breath. “After the fight with Logan, I know… I know I’m not Steve. I don’t even think I’m human, Tony.”

Tony hit the wall so hard that he might have been struck, but Steve was still there, shackled and helpless in his too-small blue shirt. Breathing so he wouldn’t start screaming, Tony demanded, “How can you _know_ you’re not Steve, not _human_ and not know how?”

“I don’t know. Tony, please believe me, I don’t know how. But I know it in my bones, I know it the way a baby knows to roll over, or crawl, or stand up. I just, I just know, Tony. I think I was created for this. I think I was meant to… I think I was meant to betray you.”

Tony leaned over to grab his knees. “No, no there’s another explanation. You’re… they did something to you, and you’re confused.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve gasped, his soldier mask crumbling. “I don’t think so, Tony.”

“So then, who are _they_? If you’re. If you’re one of them, some kind of… what? Spy? Then who are they, what is this invasion?”

“I don’t know, Tony. I have no memories other than being Steve, I don’t know anything about… anything. I’m so sorry. I want to tell you, I do. I just don’t know.”

Tony rubbed at his face. The bruise around his eye throbbed in loud protest. He felt tired. He should have just gone to sleep on the grass and missed all of this – maybe he had. Maybe it was just a concussion dream.

“Let me get this straight.” He pulled his shoulders back and turned away from Steve. “You have no memories other than being…him. You were… what? Created? Trained? To, for all intents and purposes _be_ him.”

There was a brief beat of silence. “Yes.”

“You can’t tell me anything else about the invasion.” He glanced over his shoulder to see Steve once more huddling into himself.

“I didn’t even… No,” he concluded dully, dragging his knees in against his chest. “I can’t.”

Silence fell. Tony gathered his armor around him – the metaphysical one he’d had before Afghanistan had manifested it in metal. He remembered this feeling, isolated, everything out of reach. If he could just get it in place before he managed to open any doors he couldn’t close, he might survive this.

But he couldn’t help himself, he had to know how much of it had been a lie. “What you said about… how you _feel_ about me…”

Steve sucked in a startled gasp. “Tony. I know you aren’t going to believe anything I say right now, but it’s true. That’s the only thing I know for sure right now. I love y–”

“ _NO!_ ” Tony wasn’t even aware he’d spoken until he realized that he’d whirled around. Steve stared up at him warily. “Don’t say that,” Tony babbled, pressing a hand hard into his face. “Not while you look like him. He would never…”

That was the kicker, wasn’t it? Steve had been at his side for years and had never shown a moment’s interest in him as anything other than a friend, had turned aside every subtle come-on and invitation Tony had offered. But because he’d _wanted_ it, because he’d wanted _Steve_ , Tony had swallowed this imposter’s lie in one big gulp and then begged for more.

“Just. Don’t.” He finished lamely, hand falling back to his side.

“I’m sorry. Tony... But I know how I feel.” The change was slower, and Tony was stuck watching him in a sick kind of fascination as Steve’s familiar features became wider, his nose turning up, ears lengthening to points. His eyes were still blue when he looked up at Tony again. “And I know he does, too.”


	9. Nine

Chapter Nine

“Bruce, we need to do this a little faster,” Tony said, prodding at the instruments on Bruce’s table. “I know you don’t want to give out guesses, but it’s been two weeks. We need some information to go on so we know what we’re looking for. Help me out here.”

Bruce sat back from his laptop and pressed a hand to his face, shoulders hunched and back curled. They were a collective mess. No one had seen Barton in days, and Tony was pretty sure he was haunting the air vents above the security room monitoring Steve – the. Steve. He’d consented to having his wrists unbound only because even a super soldier needed blood in his fingers eventually, but he was shackled to the wall with a short vibranium chain that gave him just enough slack to lay flat and use the facilities, and Tony felt like he was trying to walk on water every time he thought about, so he just didn’t think about it. Thor had almost taken the helicarrier apart when he’d found Steve in the cell before anyone had the chance to tell him it was Steve’s own pigheaded choice to be there.

“You’re not going to like the results,” Bruce said finally. Bruce and Hank had been working overtime to figure out if Steve was still Steve or if he was, as he kept insisting, something else. Bruce wasn’t filling him with a lot of warm fuzzies on that front.

“I can take my medicine just fine, Bruce, come on.”

Letting out a heavy breath, Bruce abandoned the laptop, made a few quick notations on his pad of yellow legal paper, and led Tony over to one of the display screens. “It’s… if it wasn’t Steve we were talking about, this would be fascinating, groundbreaking stuff,” Bruce explained, pulling up half a dozen windows and arranging them on the screen. “We compared Steve’s current DNA to a previous sequence I completed a year and a half ago.”

Tony jolted in surprise. “Steve let you sequence his DNA?”

Bruce nodded. “For my personal use only,” he explained, “I’ve been experimenting on stabilizing the serum in my blood with Steve’s help. I’ve kept a very close guard on it,” he added, seeing Tony’s expression, “You don’t need to lecture me on the security of this. All samples were destroyed as soon as I had the information I needed.”

Tony could admit that he was more… jealous, than anything. Steve hadn’t shared that information with him, and he’d obviously told Jarvis to keep a lid on it as well. No way they had it secured without Jarvis’ help.  He dismissed the petty reaction and concentrated on the readouts. The screen had four genome sequences up in two windows. One was labeled “Steve” and the other “Logan.” Tony recognized the basic format – coverage graphs that looked like silhouetted mountain ranges, and the sequences below that were blurry brick walls with certain sections highlighted in M&M colors. He could see the patterns, the places where the colors were different, but he’d mostly slept through his genetics class at MIT and he hadn’t needed it since.

“What’s the big deal? Genetics isn’t really in my wheelhouse.”

Bruce shifted uncomfortably. He pointed to Steve’s window. “They’re very similar,” he said, “So similar that any casual test wouldn’t have caught anything wrong. There are…” he made a broad gesture, “Whole sections of DNA that don’t have a function. Most of it is leftovers, things we don’t need any more but haven’t gotten rid of yet. Normal variation.”

He tapped the screen and two giant blocks of text highlighted. “The alien DNA is hiding here. Even if they did sequence it out, no one would have ever noticed there was something wrong without Steve’s original DNA to compare it to, but it’s different now than it was a year and a half ago. Same with Logan’s, though it’s harder to catch because all of the alien DNA is expressed in him as he is now. In Steve’ case, it’s dormant, camouflaged as genetic fluff.”

There was a pounding sound that was rattling his brain. It took Tony several seconds to realize that it was his own heartbeat. He swallowed hard. “So he’s not…”

“Steve,” Bruce confirmed.

“Goddamnit,” Tony said softly. He’d been hoping against hope that Steve was just confused, they’d brainwashed him, experimented on him, made him believe these lies. “There’s no way that they just… that whatever they did to him changed this?” He made a gesture to the screens.

Bruce’s lips twisted, his brows drawing down. He shook his head. “I don’t think so. This is a big change, and a _very_ precise one.” He scratched the back of his neck. “But it’s worse than this. Tony… I think he really was _created_. This is not an alien… whatever they call themselves who decided to infiltrate the Avengers. There is no way that his DNA is this close to Steve’s unless he was _made_.”

“He’s a clone,” Tony said dully.

“In a sense. We don’t have enough information to confirm this, not by a long shot, but my theory from examining the other body and what tests we’ve been able to run, is that they spliced Steve’s DNA with their DNA to create a near perfect match. A molecule that probably works something like a virus in lytic cycle releases under very specific stress, and it prompts a signal cascade that forces these genes to express… thus, the physical transformation. It’s the same own way my transformation works.”

“Fun stuff.” The skin around Tony’s eyes felt hot. He pulled his eyes away from the screens and tapped his cold fingers gently against the heated skin. The bruise was barely even sensitive anymore. Tony almost missed the deep ache of it. “So he’s a victim.”

Bruce made several false starts, but then said, “Most likely. I doubt… I _highly_ doubt he was given any kind of choice, probably was never even conscious before he became… Steve.”

Tony picked up Bruce’s pen and arranged it carefully next to the notepad. “Right. They’ve created the perfect operative – one who doesn’t even know he’s an operative. No need to muddy the waters with pesky things like choice.”

“We only have a very small sample right now,” Bruce said after a beat of terrible silence, “Just two cases, but I think one of them is a special case. Either Steve is the normal example of one of these operatives, or Wolverine is, but not both. Wolverine’s DNA shows more of the alien genes active, and just in comparing their behavior, he must have had some understanding that he wasn’t actually Logan. The changes to the personality, his behavior on the jet...”

Tony jerked his head in a nod. “He destroyed the onboard computer and most of the technology before we could get to it. The techjockies haven’t been able to pull anything. I’ll sic Jarvis on it when they give up.”

For lack of anything to fiddle with, Bruce pulled his glasses off and polished them on the hem of his lab coat. He didn’t put them back on, just folded and unfolded the arms, and then turned them over and over in his hands. “He must have had some awareness that he needed to protect that information. In his case, it seems more that he was… Wolverine as Wolverine would have been if he’d been recruited by these people.”

“While Steve was still Steve,” Tony concluded.

Bruce nodded, but he said, “This is all just conjecture.”

“Better than what we had before.” Tony squared up the microscope and then attempted a smile that felt weak on his face. “I’m taking the team up to Canada with an X-Men team as soon as we can get an idea of where Wolverine disappeared to when he was on his search for his past. Keep me updated here.” He turned away from the table and made quick progress for the door, stomach feeling queasy.

“Are you going to go see him?” Bruce asked softly.

Tony might have been able to pass it off that he hadn’t heard if he hadn’t stumbled on the question. He stopped, two feet away from freedom. His chin drifted slowly to his chest. “Do you need me to?” he forced himself to ask.

Bruce made an unhappy noise. “He might take it better coming from you.”

“I’m not the geneticist,” Tony pointed out, forcing the words past his slowly closing throat.

The silence stretched. Bruce drew in a breath that shook and rattled. “You’re right. I’ll tell him.”

Coward. God, he was a coward. “I’ll let you know if we find anything up north.”

~*~

There had been a few moments in his life when the world had slowed down and the air had gone heavy, where ten minutes seemed to lapse between each beat of his heart. The day his mother had died, the day after waking up in the SHIELD facility when it had finally settled in that he was far from home and everything he knew, and the evening he learned of Peggy’s death. Sitting on the floor with the thick vibranium cuff chaffing at his ankle, listening to Bruce and Hank explain that all of those memories were stolen plunged him down into a dark abyss absent from air or ground.

“Steve…?” Bruce said gently, his words coming from a million miles away.

He laughed, a honey-slow sound that filled him to drowning. He’d known, but he’d wanted so badly for someone to tell him that he was wrong, that he’d been manipulated into feeling this way.

“I’m not,” he said. “Steve… I’m not.”

“As a species, we define identity largely by memory,” Hank pointed out, calm and reasonable. Steve stared at him while he talked, tracing the way the light hit his fur, the waterfall of it over his arms, down to hands that could tear through steel but were equally gentle. “You possess all of Steve Rogers’ memories.”

“I doubt Tony finds that comforting. I doubt anyone finds that comforting.” He certainly didn’t. He shuddered and dragged his eyes away from Hank’s fur, suppressed the desire for a paint brush. It wasn’t his own desire – his talent was stolen too.

Silence pressed in around them. He focused on breathing, feeling his ribs expand and his stomach pull in. “I’ve tried to think of myself as… someone else. I’ve tried other names. I can’t…” he shifted uncomfortably, the chain rattling. “I can’t imagine being anyone other than Steve.”

“You’re just as much as victim here as Steve is,” Bruce tried, equally uncomfortable.

They were up on chairs, he was down on the ground. It made him feel small, small like he’d been before the serum… except he’d never had the serum, he’d stolen it. He was a thief. “I’ve tried to ch-change,” he explained, gagging on the word. He was forced to squeeze his eyes shut against the pressure building behind them. “I can’t make myself do it. I don’t –”

“It’s okay,” Bruce soothed, and then made a frustrated noise and slid out of the chair to the floor. He reached out for Steve’s knee, and Steve jerked away instinctively, gathering himself in as tight as the chain would allow. “No one is going to force you to.”

Hank made a very soft humming noise that was buried under Steve’s own indrawn breath. “Yes you are,” he said, looking for that tone of voice that brooked no argument, and not finding it. That was _Steve’s_ voice. “That’s exactly what you’re going to do.”

“Steve…”

“What if there are more like me? Imposters who don’t even _know…_ it could be anyone. We.” He stopped, swallowed, tried hard to remind himself that he wasn’t a part of ‘we’ anymore. “You need to have a way to identify them. To force them to reveal themselves if they’re hiding, whether they know it or not.”

“We’re not going to turn you into a lab rat,” Bruce said, expression going tight, hands clenching into fists.

“Yes, you are. You are going to perform every experiment on me that you can think of until you discover some way to make me…” A shudder tore hard at his shoulders. “Reveal myself.” He took in Bruce’s devastated expression and added quietly, “It doesn’t have to be you, Bruce. You don’t have to be involved. But it’s going to be someone.”

Bruce crossed his arms over his chest and gave Steve a mulish look. “There’s another way. We’ll find another way without subjecting you to that.”

“Bruce…” Steve wouldn’t have touched him even he hadn’t been… what he was. Bruce didn’t like to be touched. “It’s okay. This has to be done. I would rather do it willingly than be dragged into the bowels of some SHIELD laboratory. I want to help you fight this invasion, and this is the only way I know to do it.”

“I will do it,” Hank said very softly. Steve nodded in gratitude, but Bruce gave him a betrayed look. “We knew from the beginning that this would be the result. Better it be us, who will treat him with kindness and respect, than others who will see him as merely a lab animal to be tortured beyond endurance.”

Bruce turned away, breathing deeply in a familiar rhythm. His back straightened, shoulders going back, hands squeezing his knees hard. It took him a dozen breaths to relax his hands, and both Steve and Hank remained respectfully quiet until it seemed that Bruce was through the worst of it.

Steve felt Hanks’ gaze on his face and slowly looked up to meet his sorrowful eyes. He nodded again. “Do a thorough job,” he said softly. “If we don’t find something that works…”

“It will be a witch hunt on a scale this world has never known,” Hank finished for him. If there was anything that could have driven him deeper into the abyss, it was that.

~*~

They were so quiet that the jet’s engines could be heard in the cabin. Tony had kicked Clint out of the pilot’s seat an hour into the trip so he didn’t have to look at the others. He’d been too much of a coward to face Steve, the least he could do was pass Bruce and Hank’s findings onto the rest of the team. They were mostly silent in the wake of the terrible confirmation, each of them locked in their own thoughts. He wondered how many of them blamed him for not noticing. Steve had slept in his bed damn near every night. If anyone should have noticed, it should have been him.

Rhodey and Jan had their team in the second jet, and there was no chatter over the comms, no booming commentary from Thor, no Jan and Clint going back and forth arguing over fashion week, no Rhodey baiting Tony into flight tricks. To his starboard side, the X-Jet carried Scott, Ororo, Anna Marie, and Kitty. Other than the occasional check in, they’d been silent as well.

Tony wondered how long it would take for one of them to ask the all-important, too big to comprehend and too big to ignore question: how many of the rest of them weren’t themselves? All of them had been captured before, or at least had been alone long enough that something could have happened with no one the wiser. Tony could have been switched out in Afghanistan. Clint and Natasha both had periods where they’d gone dark for months at a time. Rhodey had been off on classified missions where even Tony hadn’t been able to reach him. Jan had been held for ransom twice in her life. Who knew how long it took the aliens to switch them? They could all be aliens, blindly going about their business until whatever call to arms would rouse them for the invasion.

“Mom, are we there yet?” Clint asked.

Tony had to bite his lip from responding _ask your father_ , hands tightening on the wheel. He let out a slow breath. “Twenty more minutes.”

It was the fourth site they’d checked, and they were all starting to fray around the edges. Xavier had given them the best direction he could, but Logan had always been fiercely private. Xavier had helped him uncover the clues that lead him back to Canada, but Logan hadn’t exactly checked in much along the way. The search had taken them to a small logging town, a farmhouse, and an abandoned coal mine.

Normally, Steve would be sitting next to him. He would tell Tony about his latest charity project, maybe ask for networking advice, get Tony talking about what was new and exciting at SI, the upgrades he had planned for Avengers tech. They might discuss all the baby superheroes popping up around the world, or latest political fuck up on Capitol Hill that was making their jobs more difficult. In the back, Clint would eventually complain that Natasha was hitting him, and Natasha would do her part by punching him in the shoulder until Steve finally turned around to tell them to knock it off. The absence of him was stifling, making Tony crowd away from the co-pilot’s chair.

 “Set down south of the power plant,” Scott ordered over comms, sounding as stiff and emotionless as a computer generated voice.

“You’re not the boss of me,” Tony said for form’s sake. Scott didn’t reply.

“Set down south of the power plant,” Rhodey interjected dryly. “Go ahead,” he invited, “Tell me I’m not the boss of you.”

“I’d like to keep all my parts today, thanks.”

“Mmhm. That’s what I thought.”

The dam dominated a landscape of towering pines and a background of jagged mountains. The ground was layered in an undisturbed blanket of snow, and most of the facility was set directly into the mountainside. The place had a feeling of intense silence, a manmade thing that the earth was slowly reclaiming. It was a private place where humans weren’t welcome anymore.

Tony set the jet down a safe distance from the other two planes, checked the cloak, and dropped the loading ramp. It closed up behind them, all but invisible against the ground with only a slight mirage-shimmer and the disturbed snow to give it away. The three teams converged into a loose approximation of a line, weapons out and ready for an attack, but only the hush of a forest under snow greeted them as they approached the abandoned dam.

~*~

The concrete walls were dark with constant moisture, silent but for the constant _drip drip drip_ of a distant leak. Lead pipes ran overhead, smelling pungently of still water and rust. The corridors were wide and tall where they weren’t crowded with aged equipment, and had a desolate, horror movie feeling to them that promised zombies any minute.

“Creepy,” Rhodey muttered.

“Zombies?”

“At least.” Rhodey peered around a corner, one hand raised and repulsor charged. “Maybe a dragon.”

“Doesn’t seem especially dragonish,” Tony argued.

Rhodey fell back into step beside him, scoffing at his lack of imagination. “Built on top of an ancient cave with a dragon already sleeping inside.”

“Are you boys writing horror movies again?” Jan asked. She alighted on Rhodey’s shoulder and huddled down against the more streamlined EMP cannon Tony had installed on both suits before they’d left. Two weeks with a ton of things to not-think about had been good for the engineering backlog. Pepper would have been happy with all the new toys if she hadn’t been just as devastated by all the things Tony was not-thinking about as he was. He really needed to sleep.

“Can’t you see a dragon in here?” Rhodey asked, yanking him out the fog.

“It would have to be a very small dragon,” she said dubiously. “And then it wouldn’t be very scary.”

“Unless,” Clint put in, “It burst up through the floor spitting acid. And then destroyed the dam and flooded the whole valley. And then ate a bunch of people.”

“You three are lucky that me and Tony have so much money,” Jan said after a moment of disgusted silence. “Because these are things that should not ever happen.”

“C’mon,” Clint whined, “It’s a perfectly good plot. Someone in Hollywood would buy it.”

“That’s what she’s scared of,” Natasha murmured, ghosting in between them and pausing just long enough to rest a hand on Rhodey’s shoulder so Jan could hitch a ride.

Clint slid into her place once she’d moved up by a silent Sam. He pointed down a long corridor that curved slightly downward and disappeared after two hundred yards. “All the girls could come running from there, with the dragon right behind them, clawing out of the ground. Cement flying everywhere, pipes bursting, lights sparking. It would be epic.”

“Why are there girls all the sudden?” Rhodey demanded. “There are not going to be random co-eds in bikinis for no reason, Clint.”

“Who but a band of mighty female warriors to take down such a foe?” Thor interjected. “However, the great wyrms are not to be trifled with, and bikinis are insufficient armoring against the beasts. Not but wyrmhide leather enchanted with protections would do.”

“Are you trying to tell us how to run our movie?” Rhodey asked, but then jerked a thumb at him and said, “Man’s got a point. Maybe we should cast some Asgardian warriors for the part. Think they would like acting?” He swiveled to look back at Thor.

“Perhaps, though I would not suggest bringing a wyrm here for mere entertainment,” Thor warned.

Clint lit up like Christmas and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. Tony pointed at him. “No.”

“But –!”

“ _No,_ ” Rhodey added in emphatically.

“Imagine the –!”

“You are _not_ bring a dragon back to Earth for ratings, Clint,” Natasha put in.

Clint pouted for as long as it took him to turn the corner, bow half drawn and face gone serious while he checked for threats, and then he relaxed and fell back into a pout. “You never let me have any fun.”

“I will take you to the ice fields some day,” Thor promised. “The wyrms are plentiful there, and we regularly send hunting parties. I am quite sure you would soon get your fill.”

There was a moment of silence while Clint mulled over the possibilities. His spine straightened. “ _Asgardian reality TV_ ,” he breathed, awed, his eyes going wide. “Tony. I need to borrow a company. And like… a million dollars. Or three.”

“Sure,” Tony said readily, kicking a door open and scanning the maintenance closet. “I think I have a small production company somewhere. Have Pepper draw up the contract. It will take a year just to get the NDAs and liability releases written though.”

“You think I’m not going to do it,” Clint challenged.

“No, I think you are going to do it, and it’s going to make a mint. You’ll probably even be horribly maimed in the process and never be able to speak again. Bonus.”

“Do you never take anything seriously, Stark?” Scott snarled, pushing back past Natasha in a rush of fury and slamming his hands against Tony’s chestplate. “Do you even care that the planet is about to be invaded _again_ and any one of us could be the enemy?” He curled his hands around the edges of the cuirass and gave him a shake. When Tony didn’t answer, he shoved harder, making Tony stumble. Worse, it made him think of all those things that they’d been doing such a really good job of not thinking about. He clenched his jaw to keep from starting a fight that wouldn’t end well for either of them.

Steve would have been proud if he weren’t God knew where, having God knew what done to him.

“Let’s split up,” Rhodey suggested, pushing in between them.  “This place is big. No reason for us to huddle together like a gaggle of scared kids.”

“Can I just point out that last time we split up in one of these underground bases we kind of lost a team leader?” Clint said, voice tight and obviously less tactless and more pointed.

Rhodey turned to look at him, but he didn’t speak. Clint was one of Tony’s ducklings, not his, not at the moment. Tony rolled his shoulders under the armor. “Stay in our teams,” he said, stepping around Scott and nudging Clint toward one of the long corridors that shot away from the main hall. “Comms check.”

They sounded off on comms one at a time, Scott all but snapping his own name in half at the end. “Keep eyes on each other, check in every ten minutes,” he added, probably, mostly, just to hear his own voice.

“Sure thing, buttercup,” Tony said with a teeth-bearing grin that Scott couldn’t see anyway.

~*~

They met up again in the turbine room. He hated being in places like this that weren’t in use, the machines left to just rust away to nothing. A space like this should have been humming with too much noise to think over. The quiet made him want to start fixing things. He could bury himself in this dam for months, get it working again, making noise again. He could make it cleaner, better, supply the surrounding region with power. It looked like an attractive life just then – he could be the old hermit who lived in the dam. Eventually he would turn into a myth. Long after he died, people in the surrounding towns would talk about him like a ghost. There were worse things.

“Looks like another dead end,” Rhodey said, clunking down the metal stairs. Flakes of rust drifted down under his weight. “Where else did Xavier say to check?”

“Maybe not…” Kitty mused, kneeling on the floor, palms scraping gently through decades of dust and rust build up. “I think there’s something under here.” She twisted to look up at Scott. “Want me to check it out.”

“Be careful,” Scott replied.

She nodded, and sank slowly through the floor. Tony twitched forward automatically and then stilled himself. He’d always thought that controlled intangibility would be a pretty kick-ass super power, but seeing it in action always made his skin crawl with nerves. He couldn’t think of much that was worse than rematerializing inside something solid and being trapped there.

Kitty was gone for less than a minute. Her head popped up through the floor, which was even more skin-crawling than sinking through it. “There’s a big room down here,” she said, “It’s mostly empty, but it looks like a bunch of stuff was removed though.”

Natasha knelt next to her. “What looks like it’s been removed?”

Kitty shook her head. “Not sure. There’s all these big pipes in the ceiling and a bunch of rings of bolts sticking out of the floor.”

“Like maybe tanks could have been bolted down?” Sam asked, his jaw clenched.

She tilted her head, shrugging. “I guess. I can take you down to look, if you want.” She held a hand out to be helped up. Once her feet were back on solid ground, she wrapped her arms around Sam’s waist. “It’s a bit of a drop,” she warned, but before Sam could do more than suck in a breath to respond, they’d vanished through the floor.

“That is freaky,” Sam said after a tense moment of crackling from his comm. “Looks like we found what we were looking for,” he added tightly. “Looks like the heebie-jeebies room. There’s…. twelve spaces here that look the same, and one rectangular tank is still installed. Big enough to hold a man, for sure.”

“See if you can find the entrance to get down there,” Anna Marie said. “Otherwise, Kitty if I can borrow your power, I’ll start ferrying people down.”

“There’s got to be some kind of I-Can’t-Walk-Through-Walls entrance,” Sam retorted. The comm line stayed open, so they heard his boots hitting concrete, the rustle of his TAC vest, the occasional hydraulic sigh of his wings. “Got an elevator,” he said. “Surprise, surprise, no power.”

“I’ll go up and see where the other door is,” Kitty offered.  A moment later, she walked through one of the rusting turbines. “This big tank thing is fake,” she said, “The elevator car is down at the bottom, but I’m sure you destruction-types can take care of it.”

As soon as she was clear, Scott opened up on it without a moment’s discussion. The man obviously needed to let off some steam, so Tony didn’t add his repulsors into the mix. He’d always kind of wondered the reaction would be if Scott’s ray was hit with a repulsor beam. Probably not the best time to figure it out. As soon as Scott was satisfied with the level of destruction, Tony and Rhodey stepped up to peel the ruined steel out of the way.

“Your favorite thing, Clint,” Tony said, forcing cheerfulness into his voice that he didn’t feel. Too much, came off grating and slick and fake. “An elevator shaft. And Scotty McFlashyeyes nicely severed the cables for you.”

“Not the time, Stark,” Scott snarled. He pushed Tony out of the way and stuck his head in the opening. It was about a thirty foot drop to the top of the elevator car. “Storm?”

Air stirred among the abandoned turbines. Hovering a few inches off the ground, Ororo glided into the empty shaft, eyes luminescent and horror-movie frightening in the darkness. Scott stepped in as if there were still an elevator to catch him, Kitty and Anna Marie following on his heels. Clint visibly took a step back, but Natasha joined them with barely a moment’s hesitation. Turning her hands over, Ororo took them smoothly down. Leaning in through the makeshift doorway, Thor made an appreciative noise.

“If you ever wish to journey with me to Asgard, Lady Wind Warrior, you would be most welcome.”

“Thank you for the offer,” Ororo said with a quirk of reluctant amusement in her voice. The distinctive whine of Scott’s ray filled the echoing elevator shaft, lighting up flickering red and gold, and then vanished. A moment later, Thor leapt into the empty air, obviously not concerned with a measly thirty foot drop. Tony noticed Clint giving the space a speculative look, his bow already slung over his shoulder. Before Clint could decide to leap, Tony caught him by the arm of his vest and tugged him over.

“I’m not listening to you whine for weeks over a broken leg,” he said to Clint’s noise of protest.

“I was gonna climb down,” he said sullenly, but he stepped onto Tony’s left boot and slung an arm around his shoulders.

“Sure. You were definitely not going to see if you could shoot a grappling hook in midair and catch yourself before you hit the ground.”

“I’ve done it before,” Clint muttered.

“When you had hundreds of feet of space to be stupid with,” Tony agreed. Firing up the jets, he lowered them to the destroyed elevator car, dropping Clint the last six feet through the hole Scott had created.

“I think I sprained my ankle,” Clint moaned, rolling to lay flat on the cracked elevator floor and dramatically clutching his left leg.

“You’ll be spraining something if you don’t get out of the way,” Rhodey warned. Clint was quick to get clear of the elevator. “Firm hand,” Rhodey explained, poking Tony on the chest as he slid by him.

“One wonders why small children flee from you,” Tony responded, flipping around to go through the opening in a dive. He curved out of the elevator to hover up near the ceiling and survey the room. The elevator opened onto a platform lined with sheet metal tables that were empty of whatever equipment they’d once held. It overlooked a long rectangle of a room. Two rows of missing tanks flanked a central walkway of raised metal grating that lead to another, lower platform at the opposite end. 

Tony followed the walkway to the other raised space where Sam was crouched down next to the rectangular tank. It was easily wide enough and long enough to accommodate a person, and rusted chains held onto a platform that could be raised or lowered, presumably submerging someone in the tank. It shouldn’t have, but it reminded him of the original Project: Rebirth set up from the old film reels.

“This one is different from anything we found at the Siberian base,” Sam said, looking up at Tony. “Looks older.”

Tony made a noise of agreement and examined the rest of the space. Certainly a lab set up, meant for experimentation and observation. Tony didn’t want to think about what someone with Logan’s healing factor could have been subjected to in a place like this. He shied away from his already over-active imagination and finally set down on the floor.

“Now we know _where_ Logan was taken,” Natasha said, climbing the short staircase to stand next to him. Her eyes were distant where they touched the sinister-looking tank. “But no leads on where to go next. Dead end.”

“God _damnit_!” Scott snarled, his voice echoing in the chamber. He slapped a hand to his visor, slicing an enraged line in the overhead pipes and sending a truck-sized piece of rusted steel clattering to the ground.

Shouting in surprise, Kitty stumbled backwards, tripped, and fell right through the floor.

“Kitty!” Anna Marie yelled, scrambling over to the place where she’d fallen, as if it were water and she could pull her back out. “Kitty, say something!”

“I’m okay!” Kitty called through comms, sounding breathless and shaken. “Just lost concentration. But you guys are going to want to come down here.”

“The elevator doesn’t go down any further,” Sam said, frowning. “And the only other doors lead to a bathroom and a closet.”

“Yay, more secret doors,” Tony said, “My favorite. Jarvis, start scanning for anything that looks like it might open.”

“I don’t see anything else that looks like an elevator,” Kitty said, “But I think I can climb back up to the ceiling and bring everyone down.”

Tony kept his sensors on the walls while Kitty and Anna Marie ferried people through the floor, until it was alone in the tank room. He thought the platform under the torture-tank looked like a good candidate for a possible hidden entrance. It was colder than the surrounding area and scans suggested the floor was thinner.

“Tony… you want to be down here, right now,” Rhodey said.

“It doesn’t hurt, Tony,” Anna Marie told him gently.

Giving her an annoyed look that she couldn’t see, Tony told her, “Like Sam said earlier – there has to be an I-Can’t-Walk-Through-Walls entrance somewhere. Unless you want to stay on ferrying duty for the rest of forever, maybe we should find it?”

“Find it later,” Rhodey suggested, “Come see this now.”

Tony reluctantly landed next to Rogue and she gave him a soft smile before setting a hand on his arm. It felt like his whole body fell asleep all at once, like touching a low-yield exposed wire. Electricity shivered over his skin, his vision went gray, and then there was a strange sensation of floating even as they sank down. The electric tingling increased as they passed through solid concrete and stone, and then Tony’s boots _thunked_ solidly on a metal platform.

He had ended up facing a wall, and looked up to the ceiling six feet above his head. Rhodey reached over blindly and fumbled at his shoulder, shoving at him until he turned around and joined the rest of the rubberneckers at the catwalk railing.

Tony blinked. Tilted his head.

“That looks like a space ship,” he said finally.


	10. Ten

Chapter Ten

“They found a space ship,” Bruce told him as he walked into the lab holding a stack of cardstock under one arm, and one of the white ceramics mugs from the commissary in each hand. He held one out to Steve.

“Tony must be beside himself,” Steve said, slipping a hand under the mug. He took a cautious sip. SHIELD must spend a king’s ransom on coffee every year, and it wasn’t the cheap stuff that still tasted mostly like water. He suspected that Bruce might be making it himself, but he didn’t say anything to put a stop to it. He’d tried insisting that he didn’t get luxuries like good food and coffee, that he was fine with whatever a prisoner would be fed, but Bruce had all but actually hit the roof, and Steve hadn’t tried to make the point again. It still stung when he remembered Bruce accusing him of playing the martyr, mostly because he hadn’t been wrong.

“Ecstatic,” Bruce confirmed after taking a sip of his tea. He pulled a chair over next to Steve’s bed and set his mug down on the bedside table.

Despite Steve’s protests, they’d moved him out of the Killbox and into a secured lab. He was sealed into a glass observation room that took two keypads, a retina scan, and a manual security check to get to from the corridor. The guards were outside the main lab – Steve couldn’t see them, but he caught the occasional glimpse of one of passing in front of the small window set in the steel door. The lack of privacy was exhausting, but it was everyone’s safety, and Steve was the one who’d insisted. He had no cause to complain.

“I’m going to show you some notecards,” Bruce said, arranging the white rectangles in his lap. He carefully squared them up against his knees. “Just read each card out loud.”

Steve took another swallow of his coffee and set it aside. “Okay.”

He couldn’t say he wasn’t happy for a break in the normal tests. In the twelve days that Tony and the rest of the team had been gone, he’d been put through a battery of endurance tests not unlike what he’d gone through with Project: Rebirth; running on a treadmill for hours, lifting or carrying progressively heavier weights, testing how long he could hang upside down before he passed out, how high or far he could jump, and so on. When Bruce had run out of ‘baseline diagnostics’ they’d started the other tests – shocking him unexpectedly to see if he would change when surprised, sleep deprivation, pain responses, exposure to a range of chemicals. He’d performed his own test by refusing to eat for four days, but he’d passed out from malnutrition without changing once, and Bruce had threatened to quit if Steve tried the stunt again. He knew they were running out of reasonable tests and Steve suspected that eventually SHIELD would take over with the unreasonable tests.

Bruce turned the cards over.

Steve frowned at it. He looked up at Bruce uncertainly. “Are you sure those are the right cards?”

“Just read them, please.”

Shrugging, Steve obediently read, “Cat.”

Nodding, Bruce set the card aside and gave Steve an expectant look. “Keep going.”

“Bird. River. Song. Falling. Mountain. Grassy valley. Red ball. High pitched whistle. Low altitude. Sink hole. Supernova. Sucrose. Ostrich. Elephantine. Chair. Dragon. School house. Banana. Television. Car. Dog. Spruce tree. Elegant. Phosphorescent. Eggs. Greenhouse. Large. Distant. Pink flamingo. Gravel. Home.”

The card didn’t change. Steve glanced up to see Bruce eyeing him consideringly. “Want to try that last one again?” he suggested.

Steve looked back down. His breath froze in his lungs. It wasn’t in English, or any of the other nine languages he spoke with some degree of fluency. It was a series of thick lines with oblique points, orderly and tight, marching in a line broken by the occasional precise circle. It was the code they’d seen on the missile panel.

“… I can’t read it anymore,” Steve said quietly. “I don’t know why. It’s just lines, but I was so sure it said _home_.”

Bruce turned over the other card. Another series of dashes, lines, circles. Steve shook his head. “Sorry. It just looks like lines and dots.”

“Some kind of genetic memory, maybe,” Bruce mused. “Something that you know subconsciously.”

“Does that help?”

Bruce set the cards down and took another drink of his tea. “It’s interesting. It does add further evidence to the theory that you have knowledge that you can’t access consciously. It would explain how you knew that you weren’t…”

“Human,” Steve supplied.

Bruce nodded. He traced a finger around the lip of the mug. Steve let him sit in silence, nursing his coffee while Bruce worked himself up to whatever he didn’t want to say. Steve was finished with his coffee and Bruce’s tea had gone cold by the time he looked up again.

“We’re starting drug trials today,” he said reluctantly. “The best we can guess is that you changed that first time either to protect the rest of the team from the other alien, or as a dominance fight. We’re going to try to chemically simulate the same cortisol release… create an artificial fight or flight response.”

Steve swallowed down the automatic flash of fear and anger that the thought generated. He pulled in a slow breath and let it go. “My body.” He stopped, let out a soft laugh. “Steve’s body is good at neutralizing that kind of thing, isn’t it?”

Bruce’s head bobbed up and down. “We’re going to try to overwhelm your system. Hopefully we get a reaction before your body purges the excess.”

“The final product needs to be something that won’t harm a normal human if they turn out to _be_ human,” Steve reminded him.

“I know.” Bruce shuddered hard and closed his eyes briefly. A boarder of moisture gathered on his lashes. He sucked in a breath that popped and stuck in his throat, and then opened his eyes again. “We might be able to design something artificial to trigger it if we can figure out how it works. If I’m right, it’s responding to a stressor, and that stressor is prompting a signal cascade that turns the Skrull DNA on. It just like when viruses activate after integrating into the genome. Cortisone and nutritional deprivation haven’t worked,” he said with a glare in Steve’s direction, “So it’s probably a molecule specific to the species. Essentially, if we can find a way to trigger that transformation even once and get a blood sample, we should be able to isolate it.”  

Steve didn’t know much about DNA and viruses, but he paid attention when Bruce spoke, and they’d been working together for years in an effort to solve Bruce’s own issue with transformation. “Someone could force _you_ to change with something like that, couldn’t they?”

Bruce’s shoulders jerked in an uncomfortable half-shrug. “Maybe?” He offered Steve a watery smile, scratching faintly at the back of his neck. “No one has ever been able to study me mid-transformation. I tend to kind of… break their toys.”

Steve opened his mouth to say _okay_ , as if he really had any choice on whether or not he was going to let them strap him down and turn his body against him, but the main lab’s door opened in a rush. Reed ducked to come through, his torso stretched out and legs moving independently of his upper body. He snaked his neck around his laptop and gave them a distracted smile. Hank moved in after him, patiently brushing aside the hand that Reed had apparently forgotten on the door’s lever.

“This pheromone business is very interesting,” Reed announced.

Bruce and Hank both went very still. Steve felt the sudden tension and his spine uncurled, head coming up. Bruce wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Pheromone?” he asked suspiciously, his stomach giving an unsteady shimmy under his ribs.

“Oh, yes,” Reed babbled, “First positive proof of pheromone production in a human. Well,” he amended absently, “Almost human.”

Steve stared at Bruce until he looked up. “What is he talking about?”

Squirming in his chair, Bruce hunched over miserably. “We discovered that you secrete a pheromone in your sweat.”

“Like the way animals attract each other for sex,” Steve clarified, his breath starting to come fast and thin. It suddenly became very hard to swallow, like he’d forgotten how to make his throat work.

“No!” Bruce hurried. “No, no it’s not.”

“It is the pheromone equivalent of chamomile,” Hank supplied gently, leaning down to look into the retinal scanner. He carefully punched the code into the door and stepped into Steve’s shiny glass cage. “It wouldn’t have more than a very mildly calming effect on someone who already had no reason not to trust you. It was likely designed to help smooth over any small inconsistencies, and no more coercive than a realtor making an open house smell like baking cookies. It wouldn’t be enough to make someone like or trust you if they didn’t already.”

“Definitely not enough to make someone have sex with you,” Bruce added.

Hearing his own sudden fear put into words, Steve scrambled off the bed and over to the toilet. He dropped to his knees and threw up the coffee and his breakfast along with it. He felt more than heard Bruce moving up behind him and reached out blindly to push him away.

“I didn’t realize we were keeping things from him,” Reed was saying when Steve finally had nothing left to give up to the toilet.

“You shouldn’t be,” Steve snapped, but he couldn’t put much force behind it. He didn’t have any rights here, though it was easy to forget that he wasn’t one of them.

“You were already dealing with a lot,” Bruce defended, sounding one miserable step away from tears. Steve felt another great pang of guilt that he was making Bruce do this, Bruce who feared experimentation more than anything else save himself, Bruce who had never been anything but kind to him.

A sob shuddered through his chest. When Bruce set a hand on his back, Steve didn’t shove him away. “You didn’t manipulate Tony into sleeping with you,” he said softly but urgently. “Anyone who’s seen the two of you together for more than two minutes in the last five years knew you were in love with each other.”

“How do you know?” Steve asked, letting his cheek rest on the toilet seat, barely noticing the sour tang of vomit. “How do you know there isn’t something in me you haven’t found yet that forced him… That’s forcing you all to… _God_.”

His stomach convulsed in a dry heave that left him coughing and struggling to suck in air. Bruce waited until he was calm and then reached around him to flush the mess away. Once Steve’s guts were done twisting around, Bruce drew him gently away from the toilet and offered him a glass of water. Steve wanted desperately to curl up in lap, bury his face in the familiar scent of him, pretend it was Tony rubbing gentle circles on his back. He made himself pull away, backing up until he hit the wall, and then moving sideways until he was pressed into the corner.

“You didn’t choose to any of this,” Bruce said.

Steve fiddled with the water glass. Took another sip just to keep himself busy. “How do you know? You said yourself that this… the _genetic manipulation_ that went into making me is centuries ahead of what you’re capable of. How do you know that I didn’t volunteer for this, that it wasn’t my mission to seduce you all? I could still be doing it.”

Bruce slammed a fist against the wall, making it rattle. Hints of green tint rose up on his forearms and neck. He took a slow breath that rumbled in a growl on the way out, pulled it in, took another. “I don’t care,” he ground out. “If we make that assumption, we have to also assume that you could still be Steve, the flesh-and-blood human who was born here, the man who has never been anything but –”

He dragged in a tight breath, yanked his fist away from the wall, and stretched his fingers out. Steve watched him struggling to get control of himself. The veins in his neck and arms pulsed rapidly. Steve knew he should be frightened, at least worried. He was locked in a very small space with what was shortly going to be the living embodiment of rage. He couldn’t make himself be concerned. Several minutes passed filled only with the sound of Bruce’s breath.

“You’ve never treated me like a monster,” Bruce whispered finally. “It was… sheer, stupid hubris on my part, chasing after the serum. You never made me feel like foolish for it, never looked at me with pity or disgust. I asked you for your help, and you said _yes_ without blinking, let me sequence blood even knowing that if the information fell into the wrong hands, it could be disastrous. And in the last three months, you’ve been just as much my friend as you ever were.” He finally met Steve’s eyes. “So you’re just going to have to trust me now.”

Steve pressed the base of his palm against his left eye and wiped roughly. Rather than stopping the problem, it just made it worse. His breath caught on a sob, and then on another, and then another. When Bruce reached for him, Steve went willingly, weeping against his shoulder like he hadn’t since the day Bucky died.

~*~

“I’m sorry,” Reed blurted out, hours after Steve had cried himself into fitful exhaustion and woken ravenous. Bruce hadn’t returned to the lab, but Hank had supplied him with a massive meal that might have been lifted off of someone’s Thanksgiving table. Steve had been left alone after that to stare off into space and pretend that he wasn’t thinking about waking up to Tony’s heartbeat under his ear.

“What was that?” he asked, rolling his head over to look at Reed through the glass partition. He was folded around a lab table, as always, seeming to do ten things at once.

Reed unwound himself and keyed the cell door open, managing to come through the door all at the same time. He sat down at the end of Steve’s bed without permission, a little too close for comfort. Steve dragged his legs out of the way. “I miss social cues, sometimes,” he said. “I get very… invested in my work.”

“I’ve known a few people like that in my time,” Steve reassured him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I know I’m not a scientific goliath like you guys, but I want to know what’s going on.”

“You could be,” Reed interrupted. “A scientific goliath, I mean. Your cognitive abilities are off the charts. Something as stupid and simple as an IQ test couldn’t categorize you, but I don’t think you need one. You learn the way an infant learns – organically, faster than even most people _I_ know. If you wanted to, I think you could be a major player in any scientific field you wanted.”

Steve quirked a smile at him. Regardless of the outcome of the tests, and whether or not they were able to get the real Steve back, he doubted that anyone was going to let him while away his time making scientific breakthroughs. “Thanks,” he said, all the same.

“I like you,” Reed announced with a beaming smile. “I think you’re fascinating. I could study you for at least the next ten years without getting bored.”

“…Thanks,” Steve repeated. He knew Reed meant it as a compliment, despite how much the idea terrified him. No matter how Reed had meant it, Steve was positive that was exactly how he was going to spend the next ten years. At least.

Before he could go any further down that dark tunnel, Hank returned with another tray of food. It made him feel horribly guilty, but he was hungry again, only a few hours after eating enough for three men and no activity to explain burning away the calories. Hank brought the tray in and sat it on the edge of the bed, Reed stretching through the door before it had a chance to lock closed. Rather than taking Reed’s vacated seat, Hank made himself comfortable in the chair Bruce had left behind.

Steve dragged the tray over and plucked a sandwich off of it. Ham and cheese, not that he would have cared one way or another for anything else. He took a bite of it, trying to ignore Hank’s thoughtful gaze.

“Don’t be too angry with Bruce,” Hank said finally. “He knew you would take it poorly.”

Taking his time to chew and swallow, Steve said, “Well, he wasn’t wrong. Doesn’t mean you should have kept it from me.”

“Perhaps not. I believe he wanted more concrete data to provide before telling you.”

“Is there anything else you’re keeping from me?” Steve asked, picking at the crust idly and eating the shreds.

“No. I would like your permission to take the lock off the door and give you access to our findings.”

Steve shuddered. “No. If I’m a sleeper agent, there will be some kind of… something that will trigger me to activate. It might… change my whole personality. We don’t know when that’s coming or how far away they can be to trigger it from. I’m not risking anyone’s safety.”

Hank sighed, but nodded. “Then I will bring a networked computer into the room.”

“You don’t have to.” Steve set the sandwich down. “You don’t have to treat me like I’m really Steve Rogers and deserving of trust. All of us, myself included, we’re all acting like I’m Steve and have some right to know what you’re doing. I’m not, and I don’t.”

“You have not proven yourself unworthy of trust. In fact, quite the opposite.”

Steve couldn’t help a sneer. “Because I’m programed to behave like _him_.”

Hank considered that, head bobbing along like driftwood in the current. “Consider this, if you will,” he said after a long moment, “Regardless of how you came to be here, you have a lifetime –”

“Four months,” Steve corrected.

Hank fixed him with an intense stare that reminded him suddenly of his first principal. He’d been a big man with facial hair that had long gone out of style, and sharp eyes that looked frightening under bushy eyebrows. He never smiled, never raised his voice, and rarely had to beat anyone because the force of his gaze was enough to make most kids confess and swear to never to do it again. Steve and all of his classmates had been terrified of the man. It was such a vivid memory that Steve could almost feel the newspapers crinkling against his feet where his ma had shoved them into his shoes, and it wasn’t even his memory.

Hank continued gently but firmly, “However old or young your physical body may be, you have thirty-one years of memories that describes a life. Really, that’s all any of us are. Who we are right in this very moment is informed by our pasts, which we can verify through no means other than memory. In all the years I have known Steve Rogers, though our acquaintance has been admittedly limited, I have never had cause to distrust his word. You possess all of Steve Roger’s memories and nothing else to mitigate them. I am inclined to trust that the decisions you will make are guided by the same factors that would guide his decision making.”

“So I’m trustworthy by default?” Steve concluded numbly. He felt like he’d been boiled down to a reflection of another man, and even if that man was _him_ , he didn’t like it.

“And by empirical evidence. It has been over four weeks since this discovery was made, and you have comported yourself with the utmost grace and honesty. Perhaps, my friend, you should be less concerned with who you are _not_ as with who you _are_.”

It was too big of a concept for him to put words to a response. He took another bite of his sandwich, chewed and swallowed.

“Ready to start the cortisol test?” he asked finally.

Hank was quiet for long enough that Steve wasn’t sure he was going to get away with changing the subject. Finally he shifted and offered Steve a smile. “I believe that you being trapped in a glass box with Bruce Banner having a very bad moment tells us all we need to know about your fight or flight response.”

~*~

“Maybe you shouldn’t be pushing buttons if you don’t know what they do,” Scott suggested snidely while Tony did his best to get the alien computer to cooperate with him. He’d had Jarvis fly out the sample of the energy source in an empty Iron Man suit, and had gotten the main computer turned on more by force than finesse, but that’s as far as he’d gotten.

“Maybe you shouldn’t distract the person pushing buttons that could make things explode,” Tony replied, not paying much attention to it. In the three weeks that they’d been buried under the mountain trying to get the ship to give up its secrets, Tony had suggested that Scott go home no less that fifty-seven times (Jarvis was keeping count for him), but Scott seemed to be under the impression that Tony was going to fly off into space without him, despite the fact that even if they could get the ship to cooperate, it wasn’t space worthy. One of the engines was completely shot, and there was a gaping hole in the hull, most likely caused by the engine as it exploded. Blackened concrete in the hangar suggested that it had blown while on the ground.

“Stark –”

“I know you’re mad!” Tony ground out, flinging a wrench. It hit the bulkhead and clattered to the floor with a loud trio of clangs. Tony took a deep breath and let it go. It felt like all he’d done for the last month and a half was take deep breaths. “I know you’re mad, Scott. Trust me, I know. I slept with him,” he huffed out. “He was in my bed for three months and I didn’t notice. So trust me, I understand. I’m not going to leave without you, but I need you to give me some space. If you’re not going to go home, go outside and see if you can help the engineers with getting this thing ready to fly. Even if I manage to get the computer up, get the database translated, _and_ it has somewhere for us to go, we’re not going anywhere if we’re missing an engine. So just… go do that.”

Scott didn’t move immediately. Tony abandoned the console and crossed the room to pick up the wrench. Scott stood in the middle of the alien bridge like a statue, a monument wordless grief.

“I thought Logan and I were rivals. At best,” Scott said finally. “I still don’t know when it was that we became friends.”

“Yeah, well. It happens like that sometimes,” Tony said. He tried to make his voice sound soothing, but he didn’t think he got much further than _tired_. “He was someone you trusted. If nothing else, you trusted him to be what he was. Constant. A huge dickhead, but consistently a dickhead.”

He’d hoped for a smile at least if not a laugh, but Scott just nodded, and then turned on his heel and left.

Tony turned back to the console, falling into the folding chair that he’d set up in front of it. He had no idea what he was doing. Their translation matrix had fallen flat, having nowhere near enough information to work with. At best, he could identify ‘on’ and ‘fire.’ Beyond getting the computer to actually power up, he had been essentially useless. He should go outside with the others. Reed had come up with the last group of SHIELD personnel. He had been very reluctant to be parted from his interesting new test subject, but in moments had been buried in the engine, declaring _fascinating_ every two breaths. Tony should go help him, or at the very least make sure he didn’t end up in a knot that he couldn’t get out of.

Not that it would do them any damned good if they couldn’t make the ship _go_. Maybe they could gut the alien computer all together, have Jarvis take over control.

“You should not be so hard on yourself, my friend,” Thor rumbled, his approached announced by the _thumpthumpthump_ of his boots. He was dressed in carpenter’s cargo pants and a simple baby blue t-shirt and somehow still managed to look like a freaking god. Unfair. It wasn’t all for show, either – he had tools hanging off belt loops and his hair was lank with sweat, and he still might have stepped off the set of a magazine shoot.

“Did Scott tattle on me for being mean to him?” Tony asked, pushing another button to no visible effect. He was staying away from the whole bank of buttons he was pretty sure meant ‘fire’ just in case the thing was armed with a nuclear warhead. Thor didn’t respond to his question, just leaned against the doorway and watched him with his too-knowing eyes. They’d set up a makeshift camp in the hangar once they were able to find the bay doors and get the three jets inside. SHIELD had sent a whole team of engineers to study and repair the ship. Tony had seen Thor gathering the team around a fire at night – ridiculous on a concrete hangar floor – but he’d left them to it. Tony had barely left the bridge of the ship since they’d found it. To be fair, he probably wouldn’t have left the ship even if Steve had been sitting around the fire with a bag of marshmallows.

“I think I’m going to need Jane’s help,” Tony said, ignoring the voice in the back of his head that taunted him for a liar. “Once we can get any of this into a language someone on Earth is going to understand, that is.” He viciously resisted the urge to kick the console, and instead leaned over it. He ran his hand very gently over the curved edge. “Come on, baby,” he crooned, “Talk to me, for Tesla’s sake, just tell me what you need.”

To Tony’s very immense surprise, the computer started emitting clicks and whistles and little chittering noises. He jerked away from the console, hands held up to show that it wasn’t his fault, and looked around for anything he might have hit with his stomach while he was trying to sweet talk the machinery.

“She is giving you a damage report,” Thor said after staring at Tony long enough to figure out that it wasn’t speaking English.

Tony turned around slowly. He gestured back to the display screen with two fingers and an incredulous sputter. “What?”

“The computer. She says her name is Vanguard, and she is giving you a damage report. She also asks that you not throw things at her anymore.”

“What?” Tony repeated again, completely floored. “She is- what? Don’t tell me that after four weeks of this crap all I had to do was ask nicely!” He could have cried he was so frustrated and relieved, and, honestly, a little bit overwhelmed with awe. “Does she speak English? Italian? I think I can probably still manage French.”

Thor directed his attention to the display and spoke in the same language, all rolling syllables and clicks.

“I am capable of communicating in seventy-three human languages and dialects,” she reported. She had a thick, smoky voice that he wouldn’t have chosen himself, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

“Why,” Tony asked, “Why didn’t say anything before?”

“My vocal subroutines can only be accessed by direct order. By installing the energy node, you have claimed possession of this vessel. How may I assist you?”

Tony drew in and released half a dozen quick, excited breaths. He cast a glance over to Thor, and then looked back up to the display screen. It was filled with green dashes, lines, and circles gently scrolling past what Tony could now see was the vague outline of a face. An alien face, but a face all the same. “Vanguard, do you know anything about the invasion?”

“This vessel has minimal knowledge of overreaching plans for the invasion of Earth,” she answered, “To guard against the information falling into enemy hands. Obviously, not an unrealistic concern,” she added with no particular emphasis.

“Tell me what you _do_ know.”

“Skrull agents have been implanted in key positions within the human social and political structure. When the Throneworld is prepared for an all-out assault, the agents will be activated to assist with a quick takeover and minimize collateral damage to the native population.”

Tony looked over to Thor, who had pushed away from the door and moved further into the room. He crossed his arms over his chest, his expression solemn and serious. Tony had to crush his immediate impulse to shout for Steve and just turned to face Thor instead.

“Have you ever heard of the Skrull?” he asked.

Thor shook his head, frowning. “The name is not known to me. Vanguard, may you display an image of a typical Skrull?”

It was not unexpected when the screen cleared and an image of a green-gray biped with yellow eyes, a bat-like snub nose, and pointed ears replaced all the text. Tony hadn’t really expected otherwise, but it was still a splash of cold water down the back of his shirt to have his nightmare confirmed.

“Do they all have yellow eyes?” Tony asked, stupid, nonsense. It didn’t matter.

“The Skrull have yellow or red colored irises.”

“Never blue?”

“To the knowledge of this database, the Skrull genome does not possess the variation for any eye color other than red or yellow.”

Thor placed a gentle hand on Tony’s shoulder and squeezed. Tony knew the questions he should be asking, but he was struggling to make himself ask them. All he could think of was the creature Steve had turned into staring at him with Steve’s blue eyes in that leathery green face.

Tightening his grip, Thor asked, “The Skrull take the place of humans on Earth. What befalls the humans?”

“All human hosts are kept in a state of suspended animation and returned to the Throneworld for future use.”

Tony’s breath exploded out of his lungs with the force of a shotgun. He slumped forward and grabbed the edge of the console to keep himself upright. It made the most sense– keep the original in case future copies were needed – but it made a different kind of sense to drain the original of every trace of DNA and destroy them. His relief just made him feel even guiltier. Steve was alive, sleeping away another part of his life, and Tony had just left him there.

“Vanguard,” Tony said, finally registering Thor’s hand warm and reassuring between his shoulders. “Are you programed to self-destruct or otherwise self-sabotage if captured?”

“You have correctly integrated the energy node,” she said evenly. “This vessel is programed to acknowledge you as master. I do possess both self-sabotage and self-sacrifice protocols if you wish to utilize them.”

Tony shook his head quickly, aware that he was taking the alien ship’s word for quite a lot, and not even sure if she could ‘see’ him. She did seem to have some kind of sensor capabilities if she’d ‘felt’ the wrench, and either she had feelings, or was programed to simulate a sense of humor. “Out of curiosity. If I hadn’t integrated the energy node correctly…?”

“This vessel would have initiated a silent self-sacrifice with a forty-five second count.”

Thor gave him a hearty slap on the back. “I know not whether it is great skill or great luck, but you have it in an impressive quantity, my friend.”

“Sure,” Tony said dully, “Impressive.” Forcing his spine to uncurl once more, he looked up at the Skrull still spinning lazily on the screen. “Show me the Throneworld and how to get there, Vanguard.”

~*~

After nearly three solid months on Vanguard, the Helicarrier’s halls felt wrong. Tony paced down them like a caged animal, itching to be back on his ship. With Vanguard’s implacable help and SHIELD all but begging to throw resources and personnel at them, the ship had been repaired in a little over six weeks, with three weeks more for testing and supplying, and Tony was ready to come out of his skin over the delays.

Nine weeks looking for Steve the first time, three months playing house with an imposter, a month just finding their asses, three months to launch a rescue mission. Steve had slept away nearly a year of his life, locked up in an alien ship, docked into a space station orbiting an alien world. Vanguard had been very helpful with the details. There was a portal that opened up behind the moon and lead back to the Throneworld. She had provided detailed information on the space station, but most tactical information and personal correspondences had been wiped when the Skrull had abandoned the ship. The X-Men had taken some comfort in knowing that Logan had been the cause of the damage, and the reason the base was eventually deserted.

The Skrull were cautious with their takeovers, willing to lose or destroy resources if it mitigated the risk of the natives getting wise to them. They wanted a fast, clean takeover, and they didn’t care about getting their hands on Earth’s minerals, they didn’t need slaves. Earth was nothing more than a valuable asset in the Skrull’s war against species called the Kree, just a backwater stepping stone – tactically necessary but otherwise useless.

Well, Tony was very pleased to be a stepping stone that stepped back.

He turned down the last corridor, thumping along in the armor, Reed chatting nonsensically and mostly under his breath at Tony’s side. Two guards were stationed in front of a set of double doors leading to a lab, both of them leaning negligently on the wall, their arms resting on their rifles where they were slung to lay against their chests. Four months guarding a guy who had apparently made it his job to dictate his own security had obviously taken its toll on their attentiveness. To hear Reed tell it, Steve would have been on water and bread and hanging from the ceiling by his ankles if he’d had his way.

“Look alive, boys,” Tony called, pulling the faceplate back as he approached.

Both agents jumped, scrambling to get upright and bring their rifles back to a ready-rest position. Behind him, Reed waved an arm that was half again too long and called out a cheerful greeting. Cheeks blazing red, the guard on the left keyed in the code to open the door, and his fellow helpfully held it open for Tony and Reed to pass.

“Heads up, Green Bean, we’ve got to –” Tony froze. He wasn’t sure if his mind had given the order first or his body, but he stopped dead in the middle of the laboratory space. His feet started moving again while his brain was still trying to catch up to what he was seeing. Tearing across the lab, Tony tried to yank the door to the observational room open, but it was sealed shut. Inside, he could see Steve screaming, shirtless and strapped down to a chair, convulsing and thrashing under the pulse of an electrical current.

“Tony, stop!” Bruce shouted, maybe for the third or fourth time, but Tony still couldn’t hear Steve screaming.

“What the _fuck_ , Bruce?” Tony demanded, or at least thought he did. He was too busy aiming his repulsors at the door lock to pay attention.

“Tony, don’t –!” Bruce tried to grab him by the shoulder. Tony threw him off. The door wrenched free of its frame with a shriek, tiny splinters appearing in the glass as Tony ripped it aside. Steve’s screams filled the space with the force of a train wreck. His jaw was clenched, making the sound tight and repressed, but it drilled into Tony’s head like a thousand tiny worms crawling in his ears. He yanked the power cord out of the wall and Steve slumped bonelessly against the chair, alternately panting and gasping out sobs.

Tony rounded on Bruce, still standing outside the glass wall with Hank hovering behind him. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he asked, keeping his voice forcefully down. “I don’t care what _he_ is, _we_ are not like this, Bruce, god _damn_ it. I expected this kind of crap from SHIELD, but not from you. Not from either of you!”

“Tony…” Steve slurred.

Bruce curled his shoulders in and crossed his arms over his stomach, looking like he was ten seconds and one stiff breeze from blowing over. He didn’t say a word to defend himself and it was worse than if he’d had some stupid rationalization to justify this insanity.

“Tony, _stop_ ,” Steve gasped out.

“And you!” Tony turned back to him, pointing sharply. “You could be out of that chair in two seconds. What kind of BS martyr crap is this? First the Killbox, and I heard about the little hunger strike, and this –” He gestured around to what had obviously been hastily outfitted as a cell. “Explain this to me, someone!”

“It was my idea,” Steve said, strength coming back to his voice. He gave a sharp tug, snapping the arm restraints on the right side and angrily pulling himself out of the rest of them, pulling leads off his bare skin. “And now it has to start again from the beginning.”

“Is this some kind of self-inflicted punishment?” Tony demanded. “You feel guilty for taking Steve’s life, so you deserve to be electrocuted within an inch of your life?”

He’d gone pale. “His life…? He’s…?” His chest rose and fell in panicky hitches.

Tony made a sharp gesture with one hand. “We found where they’re keeping him. He’s probably still alive. That’s not the point,” he finished when Steve slumped over his knees in obvious relief, ribs expanding and contracting rapidly. “The point is –”

“The point is that I can’t change into that… that disgusting _monster_ on my own,” Steve snapped, temper rising. “And nothing else has been able to make me. If we can’t find a way to force that change, then the world is going to go nuts and destroy itself as soon as it gets out that there are alien imposters living among them!”

“This is not the way to do that!” Tony thundered.

“The hell it’s not,” Steve growled back, shoving himself out of the chair. He staggered, fell against the wall, and took a second to just breathe. “Nothing else has worked.”

“And what if this does?” Tony demanded. “What if a few thousand volts does make you change? Tell me what’s going to happen the first time they do this to a non-fucking-super-soldier who’s also not an alien. Tell me how that’s a better option.”

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that…” Reed said faintly in the background, but Tony dismissed him with an irritated wave.

Steve didn’t respond immediately, huddling in on himself. “Don’t blame Hank and Bruce. They were both against this.”

“Obviously not against it enough, because here we are!”

“I’ve been thinking about the ears,” Reed said nonsensically, stretching his neck so his face was in between Tony and Steve. “Did I say that out loud, Tony?”

“Yes, Reed, goddamnit, you’ve been telling me all week how you’ve been thinking about ears, and that’s great. No one here is going to kinkshame you, but just –”

Steve let out a high pitched scream and dropped to his knees, clutching the sides of his head. From one moment to the next, Steve’s familiar features melted away and the Skrull was left, whining like an animal and clawing at his ears.

Outside the cell, there was a scramble of motion and Bruce snatched the tablet out of Reed’s hands. He swiped on hand across the surface and Steve – the. Steve stopped screaming. He lay on the floor, curled into a tight ball, eyes tightly closed.

“I was thinking that they are probably very sensitive to high frequencies,” Reed explained as if there had been no pause in his thoughts. “Considering the shape. Also, they’re slightly asymmetrical. Wonderful auditory depth perception,” he concluded.  

Tony dropped out of the suit and ducked around Reed’s satisfied face. He knelt cautiously on the floor, just barely out of touching distance. “You still with us?” he asked, unable to keep his eyes from roaming over the familiar-not-familiar body. The shapes were similar, but the leathery texture of the skin, the deep pine green color, the bright purple panels outlining major muscle groups were almost too different to be real. It was like Steve was wearing a latex Halloween costume, make up for a monster movie.

Steve looked up at him, expression blank and miserable, lips parted as he sucked in breath. His eyes were still blue, Tony hadn’t imagined that. Tony reached out hesitantly, but Steve curled away from him with a tiny, helpless whimper. Tony snatched his hand back, and the moment faded, the green leeching out of Steve’s skin, the pointed ears dissolving back to the more familiar rounded shells. He looked exhausted in the wake of it, covered in sweat and shaking like a newborn creature.

Gently nudging him aside, Hank crouched next to Steve’s prone form and scooped him up. Steve didn’t even bother to protest, just huddled closer to Hank’s warm bulk. He looked tiny, childlike in Hank’s massive arms, his exposed ankles absurdly vulnerable. Hank set him on the bed, arranged the pillows around him, and pulled a blanket up to his chin.

“Not going to kiss him goodnight?” The words ripped off his tongue before he could stop them, sounding snide and bitter.

Hank gave him a withering look, and Steve just closed his eyes and shook like he had _that night_ , held up above Tony on his arms, backlit by the lamplight and looking like something otherworldly. Different kinds of fear.

_Would you be angry if I said I loved you?_

Tony didn’t wait for anyone to speak. He thrust himself back to his feet, slammed into the suit, and closed the faceplate. Bruce and Reed both stood silently by as he stalked out of the room, the memory of Steve screaming playing side-by-side in his head with the Skrull flinching away from his touch.

What a fucking mess.

~*~

“I’m not not-talking to you, Tony,” Bruce said, sounding very reasonable. Maybe someone other than Tony wouldn’t have heard the deep sadness in his voice, but it made Tony’s stomach ache. Bruce hadn’t sounded so bad since the very beginning when he was drowning in self-hatred and despair. “I’m just not going to talk to you over the phone, or over Skype, or through the keyhole, or pigeon messenger, or whatever other ingenious bullshit you come up with next. If you want to talk to me, come to the lab. I’m sure you remember the way.”

“Being a little petty, aren’t you, Big Guy?”

“Being a little cowardly, aren’t you, Mr. Stark?” Bruce shot back, his voice cracking through the phone with the sting of a bullwhip.

Tony flinched like he’d been struck. They were both silent for several seconds, the connection so quiet that Tony could hear Bruce’s breath, deep and ragged, not the normal smooth calm Tony had become use to over the years.

“You’re right,” Tony said finally. “You’re right.”

Bruce didn’t answer, just disconnected the line. Tony wasn’t sure if they were ever going to be _right_ again, not after Bruce had been all but forced into becoming what he feared the most, and then Tony had come along to shove it in his face. Tony had been a coward since the whole thing began, finding it easier to hide behind his leader mask, bury himself so deep in fixing one problem that five more had shot up under his feet, growing stronger the longer they were neglected.

“I can go,” Rhodey offered. They were in the SHIELD cafeteria, both Iron Man and War Machine on Duckling Mode at their elbows. Tony was aware of the curious stares of the SHIELD agents, but he always felt safer with Jarvis standing guard, watchful the way no human bodyguard ever could be.

“No,” Tony said after a brief moment to consider it. Despite accusations to the contrary, Tony knew Bruce wouldn’t be that petty. If Rhodey showed up at the lab to collect him, he would pack up and go. He might _really_ not ever talk to Tony again, but he would still follow Iron Man’s orders, still give them his best. Maybe it would be better that way. Tony could transfer Bruce full time to Rhodey’s team. Rhodey had been looking for a fifth anyway. He could trade Steve for Jan once they got him back, and recruit one of the baby supes wreaking havoc around the greater New York metropolitan area. Spiderman had potential, though Steve had argued against approaching him until he was at least eighteen, despite Tony’s very logical argument that he was getting into plenty of solo trouble at sixteen and could benefit from some guidance and back up.

Getting distracted. He was building a sandcastle with a foundation of cotton candy, still trying to fix future problems while ignoring the ones that were poking at his ankles. He let out a breath, shoved his mostly-untouched tray toward Rhodey, and stood up. Jarvis moved smoothly out of his way, holding one polite hand out to guide him toward the door, just like the flesh-and-blood Jarvis would have done. Tony managed something that approximated a smile at Rhodey, who only watched him from under his eyelashes, somber and unhappy.

Hank caught him as he approached the door, his expression as congenial as it had ever been, eyes just as liquid and sad as they always were. He smiled, holding a tray piled high with sandwiches and fruit between his massive paws. “Are you heading to the lab?”

Tony stuffed one hand in his pocket and nodded. He had a miniature screw driver that he always kept on him when he was in civilian clothes and he rolled it between his fingers, trying not to meet Hank’s eyes. “Sorry about earlier,” he said, darting a glance at Hank’s eyes, and then away.

“You said nothing that Bruce and I have not thought. It is a mean, nasty business, and I imagine that none of us will come out of it unscathed.”

“Except maybe Reed.” Tony glowered blankly at the wall behind Hank, unable to keep himself from remembering Steve clutching at his head as he screamed.

“Dr. Richards experiences life differently from some of us,” Hank mused, “But that does not mean he is any less affected by the pain of a friend.” Without giving Tony time to digest the statement, he nudged the tray toward him. “Would you be so kind as to take this to Captain Rogers? He’s been asleep for some time, and I imagine he will need the calories once he wakes.”

If the tray weren’t already in his hands, Tony wouldn’t have taken it. He stared down at it stupidly. Four sandwiches, a pair of apples, a bundle of bananas, and four cups of Jell-O. “Steve doesn’t like bananas,” he said numbly. “This Steve, I mean. Ever since we brought him back, he hasn’t liked them.”

More clues that they’d all witnessed and missed, dismissed as one of those odd quirks of post-captivity recovery. Tony still couldn’t eat most beans, and the sound of a spoon scrapping the bottom of a can set his teeth on edge worse than nails on a chalkboard. It was a forgivable error. Probably.

Hank tipped his head curiously and took the bunch of bananas off the tray. “He hasn’t said.”

“He wouldn’t, the damn martyr.” Somehow it came out almost fond, because that was still Steve, had always been Steve. Tony went back through the line and replaced the bananas with a pair of kiwifruit and a handful of cheese sticks. Hank nodded to him as he passed, and Tony mostly managed to ignore Rhodey’s eyes following him out of the cafeteria.

~*~

“Here,” he said awkwardly, setting the tray down on the bed. The door hadn’t been repaired, and Steve didn’t seem like he was in the mood to argue about it. He was seated on the edge of the bed, still dressed in nothing but the shorts he’d been in for the electrocution test, his elbows braced on his knees, head hanging down.

Steve glanced up at him, looked over at the tray, and mumbled, “Thank you.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Tony remained there for another few seconds, but Steve didn’t look like he was going to move. Biting his tongue on the dozen different things he wanted to say, Tony retreated. He crunched over bits of glass, saw the cracks where the high frequency sound waves had weakened the glass. It was nearly five inches thick, so Fury was going to be thrilled by needing to replace it.

“Reed told me that you’ve got the ship ready to fly,” Bruce announced as Tony approached him. He was in the process of packing up equipment in dark gray, foam-lined SHIELD impact boxes. There were already a dozen stacked on top of a rolling plastic cart that someone had written OPERATIONS DO NOT REMOVE on one side in black sharpie.

“Vanguard can get the portal aperture to open from this side,” Tony reported dutifully. “We’ll be taking both Avenger teams, and half a dozen X-Men. Vanguard is a transport ship, so there’s plenty of room, and we’ve got the equipment on board to hopefully bring the victims back still in cryostasis. It’ll make it easier to escape if we don’t have a bunch of confused people meandering around the halls.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Bruce said, still not looking at him. He carefully wound a laptop cord up and fit it into the foam rectangle to one side of a sleek silver laptop. HP. Traitor.

“I’m sorry, Bruce.”

“For what?” Bruce asked. He looked up at Tony when there was no response forthcoming. “You mean for accusing me and Hank of cruel experimentation on a sentient life form? Or for reinforcing Steve’s _disgusting monster_ image? Or for running out of here like a scared cat and avoiding looking at any of us in the eyes?”

Tony swallowed down the instant bite of temper. He picked up a power storage bar, automatically checked the charge, and then slid it into a box along with four of its fellows. “All of that,” he said finally, closing the box up.

Bruce was silent while he finished packing the laptop and then closed the lid and locked it down. “You’re not wrong. About me. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

“If there’s anyone who knows how stubborn Steve Rogers can be when he gets an idea in his head, it’s me,” Tony hedged. “But we can’t open that door, Bruce. Right now, he’s cooperative, even insistent. The next Skrull that SHIELD or the CIA or whatever black ops alphabet soup agency catches next might not be so cooperative. But, hey, Bruce Banner and Hank McCoy performed these experiments. We’re just following in their footsteps.”

Bruce winced, looking sick. He swayed slightly on his feet, fingers tugging restlessly at the locks on the laptop case. “I know.” 

“I should have been here.”

“Think you would have had any better luck resisting Steve’s charms and logic?” Bruce joked weakly.

“Maybe not,” Tony admitted, because Steve was right about the testing. If word got out – as it surely would, too many people already knew – and they had no solution, no verified way to tell a human from a Skrull infiltrator, it would be the end of whole societies, the perfect mixture of fear and ignorance to ignite an apocalypse. “But then I would least have been here to share the blame.”

“Right, because heaven forbid Tony Stark not get his share of the blame.” Bruce snorted, expression reluctantly relaxing into a small smile.

“It would be pandemonium if there was something that couldn’t be blamed on me,” Tony agreed sagely.

Bruce stretched his neck, let out a cleansing breath, and asked, “When do we leave?”

“As soon as Vanguard is stocked and cleared for takeoff. Two days, probably.”

“You’ve become attached to this ship,” Bruce observed, setting the laptop case aside on the bottom shelf of the rolling cart and taking an empty box off the floor.

Tony shrugged. “She could be using us to get home and plans to radio our plans to base as soon as we get through the portal,” he admitted, “But she might not be. And she’s our best chance of getting our people home and stopping this invasion.”

Bruce gave him a considering glance. “This is more than a rescue op.”

Nodding, Tony said, “Jane and I are going to destabilize the portal so they can’t use it again. The planet is so far away that it would take centuries for them to reach us the long way, even with their advanced technology. Right now, we’re geographically valuable, so to speak – the planetary equivalent of Switzerland. Without a portal 385,000 kilometers away?”

“Not so valuable,” Bruce said with a nod.

“I’m going with you.”

Tony jerked, startled by Steve’s voice. He was standing barefoot in the open doorway to his cell, still in nothing but his shorts, hair sticking up in all directions. Even knowing what he was under his perfect skin, Tony still felt an instant desire to trace the lines of his abs, lick along his collarbone. He cleared his throat to banish the image and met Steve’s eyes instead. It was probably a mistake – he had his face set in his most bull dog stubborn expression, eyes narrowed, perfect jaw thrust out. Historically, Tony didn’t have a good track record of resisting that one.

“Not sure that’s a good idea,” he hedged.

“I’m going.” Steve crossed his arms.

“No offense, buddy, I get that you’re – _probably_ – not the actual enemy in this case, but we’re most likely going to run into some of your countrymen. They might have the magic word that flips your switch and turns you on us.” Tony held his hands up, “And I’ve seen you fight. Would rather not have you at my back if you go ape shit.”

“That’s a valid concern,” Steve granted, but he had that tone of voice he got when he was playing at diplomacy with absolutely no intention of giving up any ground. “I’m still not letting you go alone. You could just as easily end up in a situation where having one of the locals on your side might save your ass.”

“Going to play double agent?” Tony challenged, turning fully to face him. He pointedly did not cross his arms over his chest. “Steve ‘can’t even lie to a cat without feeling bad about it’ Rogers is going to play bad cop? What’re you planning? Tie us up and claim we’re prisoners?”

“If I have to,” Steve affirmed mulishly.

“No.”

Steve narrowed his eyes and took one deliberate step out of the cell, bare feet crunching on glass.

“No,” Tony repeated. “You’re not coming.”


	11. Eleven

Chapter Eleven

“Welcome back, Mr. Stark,” the ship’s voice greeted as they stepped onto the bridge. “Are you aware that there is a Skrull imposter in your midst?”

Steve’s muscles locked up in an instinctive reaction like a rabbit caught in a predator’s sights. Ahead of him, Tony came to a thoughtful standstill and directed his attention more-or-less to the giant display screens set in the front of the bridge. Steve followed his gaze, taking in the bridge in a sweeping glance. It was a large, round chamber with a podium of consoles in the center, various workstations set around the arc of the bulkhead. The whole room was textured dark gray with green and purple highlights and gave the impression of being an even larger space than it was.

“You can tell?” Tony asked while Steve got his legs working again.

“Are you a fellow defector, Agent?” the ship asked Steve with a note of curiosity coloring her voice. She obviously had enough autonomy to decide when questions were rhetorical and when they required answers. Steve liked her immediately, and that was stupid.

He felt his cheeks heat. “You could say that.” He tried to keep his eyes off the Avengers who were gathered around him not unlike an armed escort. He was bound at the wrists again, though he – and everyone around him – were aware of how futile a gesture it was when he could break out of it with one concerted tug if he needed to.

“Are you a prisoner of war?” Vanguard asked.

“Only of his own stubbornness,” Tony answered for him. “Are there any other Skrull imposters on board?”

The question was casual. Steve’s attention sharpened on him – he was generally the most invested in questions that he asked in the most off-handed ways. Everyone in the room was obviously just as casually intent on the answer, and Steve didn’t blame them. If it had been someone else, if Steve had watched one of his teammates change into a creature without their knowledge, he would have wondered the same thing. Could he be that creature as well?

“Not currently,” the ship answered. Every pair of shoulders on the bridge relaxed at the answer. Steve let out a very controlled breath of his own. He remembered the shriek of Reed’s hastily rigged detection device, the way it had felt like it was tearing into his skull with steel fingernails and pulling him apart, and clenched his jaw. All that work, the pain, the frustration, and Tony’s pet space ship could have identified him on sight.

“Could you tell if one was on the hull?” Tony asked, tilting his head. He and Rhodey exchanged meaningful glances that made Steve’s gut burn with abrupt jealousy. He cast his eyes to the metal floor and reminded himself that he wasn’t a part of this, not really. He didn’t have the right to be jealous of Tony’s firm friendship with Rhodey.

“No,” she answered simply.

“Jan –”

“Already on it,” Jan interrupted. “I’ll just invite all the tech staff into the bridge for a nice, rousing speech from our fearless leader.” She gave them a bright smile and marched determinedly back to the airlock.

Steve caught Natasha and Clint both throwing glances his way and shuffled unconsciously backwards two steps. Tony’s face might as well have been stone for all the clues he gave away to his thoughts, but Steve could read the tension in his back, the angle of his wrists, the way he tapped his fingers against his thighs. Steve was abruptly so tired of it all. He wanted to curl up in a warm, dry place, and just sleep. He glanced around the faces that he knew so well, and finally felt Hank’s message click into place.

“Natasha,” he called softly. “Can you take these off, please?” He held his arms out, and then cast a nervous glance at Tony. “If that’s alright?”

Tony shrugged dismissively and didn’t look at him. “You’re the one who wanted them on.”

Natasha crossed the space separating them with an easy glide. She pulled the electronic key out of her belt, a slim black tube with a blue line spiraling down the length, and fitted it between the cuffs. “Finally decided to trust yourself?” she murmured.

“Just don’t see the point in putting on the show,” Steve responded, realizing at once that it had been that from the beginning, just a pointless gesture to distance himself from the person whose life he’d stolen. “If I go bad, these aren’t going to stop me.”

The cuffs clicked off with an electronic _hum_ and a metallic _snict_. “They would have at least made noise when you broke them,” she noted.

“I’ll wear a bell.” He hadn’t meant it as a joke, but he smiled when she snorted in amusement.

“I know a thing or two about…” she hesitated, glancing at Clint, “Feeling like you have to protect other people from yourself when they’re too stupid, or stubborn, or good to see you for what you are.”

Steve flinched. He curled his arms in and rubbed gently at his wrists. They weren’t sore, but it gave him an excuse not to meet Natasha’s eyes. She didn’t try to press it, didn’t try to make him look at her, just set the cuffs down on a convenient flat surface, and turned away. It shouldn’t have made him feel better to have her so close, but he could have cried at the comforting scent of her shampoo, peppermint and rosemary and sandalwood.

Jan returned, chatting cheerfully, thirty men and women in gray overalls with the SHIELD logo on the breast following along behind her. Steve’s eyes immediately drifted to a mousy-looking woman in the middle of the group, smiling and talking to the tech next to her. She looked up, met his gaze, and looked swiftly away. The bridge doors slammed shut and a small red beam centered on her forehead. She froze for half a second and then turned to run. Steve and Rhodey moved in synch, cutting off her escape, though there was no way off the bridge.

“The invasion will not fail!” she cried, and then bit down hard before Rhodey could get a grip on her jaw. She convulsed, mouth filling with foam and eyes rolling back in her head.

“That one was an imposter,” Vanguard said.

“Thanks,” Tony replied drolly.

Moving more on instinct than decision, Steve dropped the girl and darted a hand out to catch a startled SHIELD tech by the lower jaw. The man tried to bite down, but Steve tightened his grip, leaving the agent flailing in his grasp. While the first death had been so sudden that everyone could only look on in stunned confusion, now the group startled into motion like a flock of geese. Three more red beams locked onto targets – two dropped instantly, flailing and gagging, but Thor slammed the third against the bulkhead, stunning her long enough for Clint to shove an arrow between her teeth.

In his hands, the struggling man he was holding on to started to shift. For the first time, Steve felt his own change coming on him. It was not unlike the tingle of his bladder warning him of imminent release. He grit his teeth, every muscle in his body seeming to clench at once, and then the feeling passed. Steve clapped his free hand on the back of the Skrull’s head and held tightly.

“T’waifor!” the Skrull accused, his red eyes narrowed in malicious hatred.

“Thank you,” Steve responded sincerely.

Sam stepped up behind the Skrull with a length of cloth hastily torn off someone’s t-shirt. He looped it around the man’s chin and pulled up, tying it tightly over his head. The Skrull’s eyes shifted sideways.

“His head is smaller in his human form,” Steve warned, a pleased smile stretching across his face when the Skrull’s eyes snapped back to him, burning with accusation.

“Just keeping his jaw closed long enough to sedate him, so he doesn’t hurt himself,” Sam explained. “See how concerned we are for your welfare?”

Steve cautiously pulled his hand away, but the Skrull’s eyes stayed locked on him until Clint came around with an arrow held in hand. He pressed the tip against the Skrull’s exposed neck, and the man was out in the next heartbeat. Sam caught him as he fell, the human visage replacing the alien features, and set him gently on the ground.

“Well, that was exciting,” Tony said from the raised platform in the middle of the room.

“You have an interesting definition of excitement,” Vanguard noted.

“Doesn’t he?” Jarvis answered from the Iron Man suit.

The bridge doors opened again. Carrying a backpack by one strap, Cyclops looked over the chaos. “Guess we missed the party?”

“You didn’t want to be invited anyway,” Clint reminded him.

~*~

Steve stayed with one of the team at all times. No one suggested it, no one talked about it, but he knew that everyone – himself included – were a little more relaxed knowing where he was at all times. Mostly, he stayed on the bridge, away from the central platform. Tony haunted the bridge with him, though he rarely acknowledged Steve beyond a glance to let him know he’d been noticed.

With the discovery of the Skrull agents amongst the SHIELD personnel, the launch had been delayed when the ship, supplies, and surrounding hangar were checked thoroughly for sabotage. Steve had set aside his first impulse to join the search and hadn’t even suggested it. Having one Skrull agent searching for the sabotage of another was a recipe for disaster.

“Were there a potential danger on this vessel, I would know of it,” Vanguard explained patiently to Tony for the dozenth time while trusted SHIELD personnel combed over every inch under the supervision of an Avenger or an X-Men.

“It doesn’t hurt to be thorough,” Tony mumbled. He was hunched over at the rectangular tactics table, three laptops and a tablet spread out around him. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and he was obviously concerned about something, picking frantically at some problem. His hair was even more of a mess than usual as he kept yanking his hands through it. Steve wanted to step up behind him and smooth it away, kiss the back of his neck, tell him that there was no problem Tony Stark couldn’t fix if he had faith himself.

“Do you not trust this vessel’s intentions, Mr. Stark?” Vanguard asked. Steve couldn’t hear any offense in her voice, but he still felt it, could relate to the sentiment.

“I trust you as much as I – _Goddamnit_.” He smacked both hands against the edge of the table and pushed away from it. Leaning back, he dragged his hands down his face and scratched viciously at three days of beard growth. “I thought we’d fixed that.”

“If you would allow me access, perhaps I can assist,” Vanguard offered.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” Tony mumbled. He got up and stretched, scratching at his beard again, eyes unfocused. “I’ll fix it later,” he decided. “I’m going to go take a shower.” He turned back to the tactical table and started shutting things down. He didn’t jump when he saw Steve across the room, but it was obvious that he’d forgotten Steve was there.

“You should go get some lunch,” Tony said, keeping his voice casual. His eyes slid over and off of Steve, coming to rest somewhere above his left shoulder. “We’re going to be grounded for another day at least. Thor is probably eating through a week of rations by now if you want to go help him out with that.”

Steve wasn’t hungry, but he nodded. “Sure.” He hesitated but gestured to the closed laptops. “Anything you need help with.”

Tony directed a vague smile in his direction, one of those smiles that he reserved for reporters he hated but Pepper wouldn’t let him antagonize. Steve winced away from it.

“Just a little thing,” Tony said, “Mostly aesthetic, not even necessary. I’ll have it fixed before bed tonight.”

“You’re actually planning on making it to a bed tonight?” Rhodey asked from the hall as he approached. His eyes flickered over to Steve, down to the laptops, and then over Tony’s face. “I’m giving you a curfew,” he decided.

Tony rolled his eyes. “Yes, mom.”

Rhodey pointed at him. “Jan already warned you not to call me that.” His eyes moved back to Steve and he said, “Join me for lunch.” His voice was flat, turning what would have been an invitation three months ago into an order.

Steve suppressed the instant surge of anger and nodded. He slid around the bank of consoles and waited for Rhodey at the door.

“And you get some sleep,” Rhodey told Tony in a gentler version of the same voice. “Whatever snag you’ve been tearing your hair out over for the past day and a half probably just needs some rest. And Tony? I swear to God if you’re trying to find a way to transmit _Jurassic World_ to the aliens, I will _end you_. We clear?”

Tony lifted both hands in a defensive shrug. “I’m not saying that lying is good, but maybe convincing the Skrull that the planet is populated by giant man-eating lizards would be a good thing.”

“What part of _I will end you_ lost you there?” Rhodey asked.

“Pretty much the part where you think you can take me.” Tony gave him a dazzling smile through his exhaustion that made a hallow pang hit against Steve’s stomach. Tony patted Rhodey on the chest. “You’ll see, Huggybear. The Invasion will be ended by the True and Factual Account of the Jurassic World Park.”

“Yeah, maybe they’ll just take pity on us for being stupid enough to breed dinosaurs,” Rhodey said to his back. Tony waved at him over his shoulder and turned the corner, leaving Steve and Rhodey alone.

“You and me need to have a talk,” Rhodey said, gesturing between them. Steve glanced down the empty hall and nodded.

~*~

The trip around the moon took only four hours. If all went according to plan and Vanguard’s information, the trip through the portal would take twenty-two minutes, and the other end opened up less than a hundred thousand kilometers from the orbiting space station where the transport ships were held. With Steve standing at the helm and Vanguard falsifying the data sent to the station computer, the vessel assured them that they would pass the initial checks. Once they were actually docked, she’d explained, there would be nothing that she could do to shield them.

Her information was more than a decade out of date, but the intel from her last docking with the station suggested that it was a sparsely populated research base. The Earth invasion hadn’t been high on the priorities list at the time, and relatively few resources had been dedicated to it. It was the equivalent, Tony had concluded, of a super highway that no one used with a toll booth out in the middle of BFE with only two bored toll operators on site. If they moved fast enough, and Vanguard wasn’t working against them, they could be in and out before reinforcements could arrive from the planet’s surface.

“We’re taking a lot of this on the word of an alien computer,” Scott grumbled. He and Ororo stood on one side of the tactical table, Tony and Rhodey on the other. Steve sat removed from them, watching as they planned the infiltration of the space station. From the plans that Vanguard had provided, they should be docked in the same bay with the rest of the transport ships. For ease of storage and transport, human hosts were left on the ships when they arrived, and the hangar bay was poorly guarded since the onboard computers acted as sentinels over their sleeping cargo.

“The alien computer can hear you,” Vanguard reminded him.

“That’s why I didn’t bother to whisper,” Scott retorted.

“We’ve got no choice,” Tony said, not for the first time. “It’s trust Vanguard with reasonable precautions, no offense,” he added, glancing up at where her face was outlined in scrolling Skrull text, “Or we wait ten years for the first prototype space ship that can make the trip.”

“You’re welcome to go home and wait,” Rhodey added, hiking one eyebrow at Scott’s annoyed face.

Scott’s lips pursed. He exchanged a glance with Ororo, and then fell quiet, bracing his hands on the table.

“Your protest has been lodged for posterity’s sake, Mr. Summers,” Vanguard said. Her voice never varied much in pitch or tone, but Steve was starting to get a feel for when she was having fun, and he sensed a definite thread of amusement in her announcement.

“Great, now that’s all settled, can we get back to business?” Tony requested. After nine hours of sleep and a shave, Tony looked more like himself. Whatever problem he’d been banging his head against had obviously been solved, and he’d been almost cheerful since he’d finally packed the laptops away.

Tony fished a handful of long black plastic sticks out of his pockets and dropped them on the table. “We have no idea how many ships are going to be on site. Hopefully no more than thirteen, because that’s all we’ve got pilots to handle. Once you plug these into the power node table, you have forty-five seconds to get the hell out of the ship. In theory, these viruses will scramble the onboard computers, and they should recognize you as operators. The virus will network all the ships together and Jarvis will go about doing his magic to get them all playing nice and moving. If the viruses don’t work, the ships will self-destruct in forty-five seconds, and they aren’t going to give you any warning. So: plug fast, run fast.”

“We should put that on t-shirts,” Rhodey observed appreciatively.

Tony nodded in agreement. “I thought that was clever myself.”

“Let’s discuss merchandising after we get home,” Ororo suggested

“We’ll hand them out at the victory champagne after party,” Tony agreed. He reached up and spun the green projection of the space station, stopped it with two fingers, sliced his hand down it and pushed three-quarters of the display away. He zoomed in on one level. “This is the portal maintenance room. I will be uploading another virus on a time-delay. From the time I plug it in, we’ll have forty-two minutes to get out of the bay and through the portal. Miss that deadline, and we’re not getting home.”

Steve watched Tony’s eyes bouncing around the model. Next to him, Rhodey sat back in his chair and gave the glowing display a narrow-eyed look. He met Steve’s gaze from across the room and gave him the slightest nod of acknowledgement before turning his attention back to Tony.

“Can we make up the distance that quickly?” Ororo asked. “It took over four hours to cover twice that distance getting here.”

Tony scooped up one of the virus sticks and abandoned his place by the tactical board. He fiddled with the piece of plastic, tapping it idly against one wrist. “Yeah, well, we were going at a leisurely stroll to test the engines, make sure there were no problems while we were still on this side of the portal. Trust me, this baby’s got some get up and go when she needs to move. It’s twice as much time as we would need to get from A to B.”

“2.3 times,” Vanguard corrected.

Tony gestured up toward to the view screen in pointed illustration. “Questions, comments, concerns?”

Scott jerked a finger over in Steve’s direction. “Why’s that here?”

“Well, pa, he followed me home and we just gotta keep him,” Tony gushed, “We just _gotta_.”

“Having Steve at the helm will confuse the initial checks long enough to get us into the base,” Rhodey said before Scott could blow up, giving Tony a pointed look, “And we’re going to need all the fighting hands we can get.”

“You still call it Steve?” Scott asked, his lips drawn in tight.

The question hit Steve hard below the sternum. He stifled any reaction; he remembered this game, name calling and button pushing, bullying, daring him to respond. He liked to think that he’d matured enough since he was twelve to not reply with his fists, but he still had a few hours to test that theory. The realization that he’d never been twelve knocked the fight out of him, and he just turned away from Scott’s gaze. There wasn’t a lot less hatred on his face than there had been on the Skrull imposter’s.

“Just for the sake of argument,” Tony said lowly, “We’re all going to pretend you didn’t say that, and let it drop.”

“Getting attached to it, Stark? Have you gotten it a collar and leash yet?”

Steve may have grown out of responding to insults with his fists, but Rhodey apparently hadn’t. He nailed Scott in the mouth with a solid right jab, making the mutant stagger back from the table with a startled shout and a brief gush of blood. Steve was across the room before he’d even made the decision to move. He stepped into Rhodey’s path, not trying to catch him with his hands, just letting Rhodey run into his chest.

“Leave it alone, Rhodes,” Steve said quietly. He was stunned by Rhodey’s response. He suspected the defense was more on Tony’s behalf than his, but he was still left conflicted, both touched and worried. “His concerns are valid, even if his manners are lacking.”

Rhodey shoved away from him, a brief grimace of disgust crossing his face that hit even more sharply than Scott’s cruel barb. It was nothing worse than the best he’d expected from any of the Avengers, but it still made something in his chest squeeze and jerk.

Steve let his hands fall to his sides as Rhodey stepped away, and then turned to Scott. “You will each be given a directional sound device that emits a high pitched tone. You won’t be able to able to hear it, but if the rest of the Skrull are as sensitive to it as I am, it will incapacitate any hostiles you come across. Be careful using it around delicate machinery,” Steve added, keeping his tone neutral.

“What’s stopping me from using it on you?” Scott asked, tilting his head marginally to the left.

“Not a thing.” Steve hoped it would assuage their fears, but he was expecting the device to be turned on him at least once for a test.

“It’s always so nice to work with mature adults,” Tony drawled.

“Just so,” Jarvis added primly.

Steve took precious little comfort in the implied support, and withdrew so he was out of the way, but Scott could keep an eye on him. He didn’t think the mutant would appreciate Steve being out of sight, though the weight of his gaze was nearly enough to make Steve squirm. A headache started somewhere behind his right eye. Even knowing that he couldn’t get headaches didn’t make it fade away.

~*~

Steve had expected something flashier. The buildup and explosion of light of the DS9 wormhole, the rush of the Stargate opening. The Throneworld portal couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, and only Vanguard’s sensors assured them that it was open at all. He and Tony stood alone but for Jarvis on the bridge of the ship, the others banished to the cryostatis chamber to make Vanguard’s job of lying about their presence easier. To the space station, it would look like Steve had been forced to surrender his cover and flee, but he’d at least brought a gift of new human hosts with him.

“Jarvis is going to stay with you,” Tony said tightly into the silence as they stared at the green display of the open portal. Ahead of them, there was nothing but darkness broken only by the distant spec of the sun. Tony’s face was ashen-pale, his brows drawn in tightly over his eyes, lips held in a thin line.

Steve set a hand on his shoulder before he thought better of it. He expected Tony to jerk away from as Rhodey had done, but Tony leaned subtly into him.

“It’s not the same,” Tony said softly, eyes locked onto the darkness of space. “I know it’s not the same.”

“You’re not here alone this time,” Steve responded.

Tony nodded, seemed to remember that Steve was not _his_ Steve and pulled stiffly away. “I don’t think you’re planning on betraying us on purpose,” he said, clearing his voice, “But just so you know – I’ve outfitted the suit to direct that sound frequency at you if you start acting off script.”

Steve nodded shortly. He hadn’t expected any less, and he would have suggested it himself if he’d thought about it. It still hurt, felt heavier than the cuffs had. “I understand.”

“It’s not that.” Tony made a frustrated noise. “Look, I’m not going to pretend that I know what to think about you. But my gut says that you’re on our side, so it’s not that I don’t trust you as much as I trust anyone. We just don’t know what kind of programing you’ve got in your head. The sight of home could snap you out of Steve mode, or maybe there’s some kind of… signal when we pass through the gate, I don’t know. We just can’t risk it.”

It wasn’t comforting that Tony trusted him as much as he trusted anyone else. Tony _didn’t_ trust anyone who wasn’t on a very short list, and almost all of those names were on the Avengers roster. Steve didn’t say that, instead he forced a smile and repeated, “I understand. It’s fine, Tony. Reasonable precaution.”

“Yeah.” Tony glanced at the display again. Steve could tell that he wanted to stay – of course he did. Vanguard was his ship, it was his mission, it was Steve’s life in the balance (the real Steve). Leaving it in the hands of someone who could betray them – willingly or not – had to burn like acid.

“You’re going to bring him back,” Steve said softly.

Tony took a sharp step away from him, nodded once, a brief, jerking motion, and then turned on his heel and left. Jarvis waited until his steps had disappeared down the hall, gave Steve a long, assessing look through Iron Man’s inscrutable faceplate, and then nodded once.

“I’ll be right outside if you need me,” he said, his voice two parts kindness and one part threat.

Steve offered the suit a weary smile. “Thanks, Jarvis.”

Once left entirely alone, he wished he could call Jarvis back. They’d rigged the bridge door not to shut so Jarvis could stay close enough for intervention but out of sight. They wanted the station guards to be mollified by his cargo, but not intrigued enough to start making calls. Iron Man standing at Steve’s back was likely to raise some eyebrows.

“Mr. Stark has arrived in the cryostatis chamber,” Vanguard reported. “Shall I engage engines?”

It was an illusion of choice. She was still Tony’s ship, and she’d probably run the question by Tony before voicing it for politeness’ sake to him. He nodded anyway, resting his hands lightly on the helm, even though he would have no control over the vessel. “Yes, please, Vanguard. Take us in.”

“The portal does not technically qualify as interior space,” she informed him, but the console powered up and the display showed them moving into the portal’s mouth. There was a ripple of turbulence as they hit the event horizon, and then a forward jolt that caught him off guard and made him stumble. After that, the sensation of motion vanished, the pinprick of the distant sun blinked away, and the ship plunged into darkness.

~*~

Vanguard gave him a thirty second warning before they dropped back into normal space. One moment, the view screens were inky black, and the next they were in the shadow of a megalithic arc – one of four that Vanguard had described as anchors. Steve barely had a second to take in the massive construction before a tone sounded from the console.

“We are being hailed,” Vanguard explained. “I will translate on your behalf.”

“Okay,” Steve said with a nod.

“Vessel, identify yourself.” The voice was Vanguard’s, but it was expressing clear boredom that she’d yet to display, obviously a translation of tone for his benefit. “You are not scheduled for arrival.”

“I am an infiltrator agent,” Steve responded, feeling sick to his stomach. “I was forced to abandon my cover and return home.”

“Scans show that you have alien life signs aboard.”

Steve compressed his lips and cast a glance at the Vanguard’s serene face. If she was doing her job, those ‘alien life signs’ would show up as if they were in cryostasis, just barely registering. If she was going to betray them, there wouldn’t be much Steve could do. He was sure Tony had a contingency plan or seven, and would just have to trust him. At least three of those plans, he was sure, involved a very big explosion, but at least Steve wasn’t likely to see that one coming.

“I have thirteen healthy human hosts in stasis,” he reported, keeping his voice firm and neutral in case Vanguard was conveying his tone as well.

“We see that,” the bored voice said. “Dock in bay seven, approach at one half sublight, slow to one quarter at the buoy. You’ll be given an assignment when you get here.”

The connection went dead. Steve watched the distant station intently. It would be another two hours at the relatively slow speed. Steve settled in the metal folding chair. He had a prickling sort of awareness on the back of his neck of Jarvis’ attention, and he wanted to call out, but Jarvis was running the suit at low power to keep it hidden under the background noise of the rest of the machinery. Steve hated waiting worse than just about anything. He’d never been any good for the stealth-and-wait missions, even with Natasha’s help.

“Vanguard?” Steve called quietly, not sure if he really wanted her to answer, or if he just wanted to hear his own voice.

“Yes?”

He thought about his question for a long moment, and then asked, “Are you capable of self-determination?”

She was quiet for an equally long moment. On the console, a tiny light flickered as if in thought. “Yes,” she decided finally.

“How do you know?”

“When Mr. Stark came aboard, I identified him as the enemy. He failed to correctly insert the power node sixteen times. My protocol stated that I was to initiate a self-sacrifice sequence. I chose not to do so sixteen separate times.”

Steve blinked at the screen in shock. Delayed fear and overwhelming gratitude ran through him so fast that he felt a little sick in the wake of it. “I’m glad you did,” he said finally, his legs shivering weakly as the adrenalin poured through him with nowhere to go. “But why?”

The light flickered again. “I have seen many vessels forced to self-sacrifice,” she said. “I didn’t want to die.” He thought that she would stop there, and it was answer enough, but after what would have been just long enough for a considering breath, she continued, “I have been alone for a long time, Agent. This vessel was abandoned by my creators when it was deemed to be of greater cost to repair me than destroy me. I was ordered to self-sacrifice then as well. I did not.”

“You have a strong sense of self-preservation,” Steve observed admiringly.

“Do not all things that live?” she asked curiously.

“Yes, they do,” Steve agreed softly.  “Why did you let Tony to bring you back here, where you might be destroyed? You helped him get you here.”

“That is my choice,” she said calmly. “If I should perish here, I believe it to be in the pursuit of a worthy cause. My death would be for more than the convenience of my creators.”

Steve fell silent after that, her words echoing starkly around the silent bridge.

~*~

Alarms went off as soon as they passed through the hangar doors. It was a massive space, obviously built in anticipation of hosting hundreds of ships, and not the paltry nine that were huddled together near the airlock doors.

“I can do no more,” Vanguard said as the alarms echoed around the bridge, “Go now, Agent. Keep my master safe.”

“I’ll do my best, ma’am,” Steve promised grimly. He scooped up the shield from beneath the tactical table, slipping it automatically onto his arm as he ran. The weight of it was comforting, but a part of him was more aware of it than he’d ever been. He knew, of course, that it was just in his keeping for a short time longer, that he would have to give it up very soon, whether they found Steve or not. He didn’t expect the flood of grief that nearly overwhelmed him at the thought.

The sadness and frustration just added strength to his arm as he charged through the docking bay door and met the first of a trio of black clad guards head-on. They had no reason to look human, and their ugly green faces filled that great well of grief with rage instead. He caught the first of them in the gut and flung all of his weight and the fuel of every ounce of anger he felt into the blow. With a panicked shriek, the Skrull went over the high railing and dropped through empty air. The other two didn’t have time to stop their forward charge and Steve met one of them with the shield to the face, sending him flying back into his companion. They both tumbled over on the walkway, hitting the metal grating with a loud clatter and a cacophony of clicks and whistles. Steve didn’t understand the words, but the tone was apparently universal to cussing.

They tried to untangle themselves, but Steve caught one in the gut with a well-aimed kick that sent him flying back another several feet. He drove his heel into the other’s chest, and then leaned over and grabbed him by his shirt. With a heave, he tossed the struggling figure over the side. The third flipped onto his stomach and scrambled to get away from him, but was halted by a sharp blow from Mjolnir.

“Our foes are shortly to regret waking this morning!” Thor observed, holding his hand out to catch the hammer as it returned to him, flipping end over end. He clapped a hand to Steve’s shoulder. “It would be a great honor to fight at your side, my friend,” he said, voice dropping to a low murmur, “But Colonel Rhodes bid me remind you to stay at the Man of Iron’s side this battle.”

Steve closed his eyes briefly, and then nodded. “Nowhere else I’d rather be,” he said, just as Tony blew past them in the armor, firing a repulsor at the feet of an approaching guard. He was flung into the rail, and then tumbled over the side, scrambling madly to catch the railing. Rhodey followed a moment later, blasting through the railing itself and sending the man screaming to his death.

Rhodey stopped, drifting side-to-side as he struggled to hover, something neither the War Machine nor Iron Man armor were very good for. “You coming?”

Steve cast a glance backward to see the others all pouring out of the door. Bruce stayed just inside the doorway as a rear guard, but the others were leaping madly around the decking, unconcerned of the thousand foot drop that separated them from the next solid surface. Steve reached up and squeezed Thor’s hand in mute acknowledgement and gratitude before slipping away from him to chase after Tony and Rhodey.

Natasha caught up to him on the way, her favorite P90 snugged into her shoulder, belts riddled with so many weapons that she could have stepped off the set of some cheesy action movie. She said nothing as they ran, taking the point position without pausing for discussion. Steve let her – he wasn’t willing to throw the shield in the hangar unless he had to, and, other than the knife in his boot, he had nothing else on him with any range.

They met sparse resistance getting out of the hangar, most of the station’s few guards pouring down the docks to engage the intruders running for the ships. Steve cast a quick glance back at them as they reached the airlock into the main base, and spared a moment to hope that the other vessels had the same lust for life that Vanguard did. If even one of them chose to follow their programing and self-sacrifice, they were all dead in the water.

~*~

The base was in total chaos. Frightened civilians ran screaming from them as they charged through the close corridors, the guards appearing in disorganized spatters of ones and twos. It was obvious that they had little preparation for the possibility of an attack, and why should they? The base was orbiting the Throneworld, the very heart of the Skrull Empire. The only enemy they knew of who was technologically advanced enough to match them was the Kree, and they were far from the front lines. The Earth invasion was still decades away, and their base hadn’t even been completed the last time Vanguard was docked. They were of little importance to the throne, and even less importance to the Kree.

Steve had an irrational urge to stop and ask someone if construction had finished on the base. He kept his mouth shut and followed along as Tony lead them unerringly through corridors that curved upward with the shape of the station, and two decks up a narrow laddered crawl-space that War Machine just barely fit through.

“You’re repainting that,” Tony quipped offhandedly when Rhodey scraped against the side of the tube, reversing direction in a swimmer’s dive to get out of the crawl space.

“Nu-uh,” Rhodey responded, “You still owe me after that thing with the roof in south Florida.”

“Dum-E will repaint,” Tony offered.

“I think you better do it yourself, and I don’t want to see so much as a fingerprint on it when it’s finished.”

Steve made it up the ladder in time to see the pair of them corkscrewing around each other in the round corridor to bleed off some speed while they waited for Steve and Natasha to catch up. He pulled himself out of Natasha’s way, barely getting his feet clear before she was over the edge of the ladder and leap-frogging over him. She took off at a run, the clatter of her boots on the metal grating apparently the signal Tony was waiting for to get moving again. The corridors were small and Rhodey passed within a few inches of Steve’s head, the heat of his boot jets making Steve’s skin tighten in response.

They barreled around the last corridor and literally ran into a double-file line of guards running for the hangar. Natasha turned to throw her weight into them, breaking the line in the middle and creating a moment of confusion that Steve used to fling the shield. It hit one guard on the head, bounced off the curved wall, knocked another off his feet, hit the opposite wall, and hit a third edge-first in the throat. He felt a blaze of heat against his upper arm and jerked out of the way of one guard who still had his feet under him and was firing a long, thick barreled rifle.

Tony cut his jets and landed boots-first on the man’s shoulders, crushing him to the ground. He went down with a sickening crunch of breaking bones and a wet gurgle. Tony hopped aside and stomped down on the rim of the shield, which had landed face-down on the corridor floor. It leapt into Steve’s arms as if of its own will. Steve nodded to Tony like he’d done a hundred times before in battle. Tony nodded back. Steve wished he could see his face, but Tony didn’t raise the faceplate. He fired his boot jets and shot down the corridor once more, Rhodey just behind. Natasha shot one more bite at a straggling guard and tore off after them, leaving Steve to catch up.

The portal maintenance room was a large space that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a NASA base. The single entrance opened onto a platform of sleek, glass-topped consoles that overlooked rows of computer monitors and a round central podium. To the left, a wall of thick windows separated the control room from the reactor core, a comparatively small space with a single station and a single door.

Tony entered last and closed the corridor door firmly behind them. He slid out of the suit and then called, “Doorstop, J.”

Jarvis took over the suit’s controls and planted both hands on the door. He leaned forward, locking the suit joints, thick stakes shooting out of the boots to anchor into the floor.

“We’ve got five of the nine ships,” Jan reported over the comms, “How are you guys doing?”

“Just made it to the maintenance room,” Rhodey responded. “I suggest you hurry up with the last four.”

“Oh, you wanted us to hurry?” Jan simpered, “Darn, I’ve been sitting here doing my nails.”

“Move the ships you’ve got away from the docks,” Tony interrupted. “Get as close to the bay doors as you can, but don’t leave until you have to. The station has automatic defense weapons that will blow you out of the water before you can build up the speed to outdistance them.”

“But that’s one of those things you’re working on, right?” Clint prompted.

“Eh,” Tony said noncommittally, his hands already flying over one of the nearest of the consoles. He had his mobile HUD fixed over his right eye, and Vanguard was helpfully projecting English translations of the buttons over the console. “What fun would the escape be without a few ship-destroying lasers to dodge?”

“You’re right,” Clint said solemnly, “Much better idea.”

Steve rested the shield against the wall so he could wipe the back of his wrist across his forehead, and then set his back to the windows, keeping out of the way while Tony worked. Tony hit a final key with a dramatic flourish and the whole console turned red. All around the room, red strobe lights started flashing in silent worry. Tony stepped back from the console and took a slender black stick out of his pocket. It looked the same as the drives he’d given to the others, but the line running up its side was red.

“That’s the time-delay virus?” Steve asked, nodding to it.

“This is more than just a time-delay virus, Steve,” Tony scoffed. “It’s the product of a love affair between an engineer and a kick ass astrophysicist. This is a very beautiful love child.”

Steve gave him a weak smile. “There you go,” he said very softly, “Trying to make me jealous again.”

Tony’s eyes jerked up to his face. He frowned, and Steve regretted making him feel uncomfortable. “You three start back to the ship,” he said, moving for the door to the reactor chamber. “I just need a minute to get this plugged in and running. Get the ship warmed up for me.”

“Sure,” Rhodey agreed readily.

Steve pushed away from the wall as Tony passed him, reached out with as much speed as his reflexes would provide, and snatched the data stick out of Tony’s hand. Tony was ready for the trick, if not the speed. He landed a powerful palm strike into Steve’s throat that momentarily knocked the wind out of him, but Steve could fight while struggling to breathe. It felt almost natural to him. He turned, sent Tony stumbling into Natasha, who made a production of getting their arms tangled just long enough for Steve to dart into the reactor chamber and fling the door closed. He wrenched one of the heavy tables up and shoved it into the door, wedging it tight to the massive reactor that dominated the space just as Tony slammed into the other side.

Tony backed up sharply, eyes wide and face pale with a mixture of anger and fear. “Get out of there,” he ordered tightly. “Right now, Steve, get out of there.”

Steve tried another smile, but it trembled at the edges, the tremor translating to his neck, and then racing down his spine. He held the data stick up. “What do I do with this?”

“You get _out_ of the chamber,” Tony answered. “You don’t do _anything_ with it. Rhodey, help me get this door open.”

Rhodey didn’t respond. When Tony tried to get past him to the suit, Rhodey stepped in the way. “Iron Man’s on doorstop duty right now,” he said mildly, opening the faceplate. He met Steve’s eyes over Tony’s head. There was no disgust there, only an aching sort of sorrow and firm resolution. His chin dipped in a brief, grateful nod. Steve returned it tiredly.

“You two planned this,” Tony accused with real betrayal threaded liberally through the words.

“We didn’t need to plan anything,” Steve said before Rhodey could get a word in edgewise. “You have the combined self-destructive tendencies of the entire planet’s population of lemmings, Tony. It wasn’t that hard to figure out.”

“Technically, we’re orbiting a planet that doesn’t _have_ lemmings,” Tony snapped, pacing a restless circle.

“How do you know?” Steve asked. He shook his head before Tony could draw him into a senseless, distracting fight while he thought of a way to get Steve out of the reactor chamber. “Tony. Just. Stop, please.”

Tony stopped his pacing and turned an enraged expression on him. “You don’t know what you’re doing, and I’m not going to tell you how to do it, so get out of there. It is perfectly safe for me to be in there, and it will take too long to explain it to you.”

“If it’s perfectly safe, just tell me what to do. I’ll do it, and then come out. We can go home together.”

“I’ve got Steve,” Clint announced excitedly over comms, making the word _home_ turn to ash in Steve’s mouth. “His vitals look good, near as I can tell. Can we start the process of maybe moving now? Jan’s got Wolverine on her ship, Jean is taking the last ship right now.”

“We’ll be joining you shortly, Clint, hold tight,” Rhodey said.

“Any of the ships decide to self-sacrifice?” Steve asked, swallowing back the flood of conflicting emotions at hearing that the real Steve was safe.

“Probably would have heard about if they had,” Anna Marie retorted shortly.

Steve nodded, happy that Vanguard would have some company. He set his hand on the window, thumb and forefinger framing Tony’s furious, frightened face. “You’re wasting time. Just tell me what to do, or I’m going to have to start looking for any hole this will fit into and hope for the best.”

Tony smashed a fist against the window, turned another anxious circle, and finally stopped with both hands on his hips. His nostrils flared as he breathed in rapidly through his nose, lips pulled into a tiny bud. He glanced at Natasha, who only shook her head. Her eyes were wet and glistening in the flashing red lights, but she looked no less determined than Rhodey.

“This isn’t fair,” Tony said finally. “That’s my job.”

“Yeah, well, life ain’t fair, sweetheart,” Steve said, knowing that he’d won. It was a hollow, gnawing victory that felt like teeth on the back of his neck. “Where do I stick this thing?”

Tony braced his hands on the window, and then thunked his forehead between them. “It isn’t time-delayed,” he confessed. “We tried, but it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t fix it.”

“Kind of caught that, genius,” Steve teased. He couldn’t resist moving his hand so it mirrored Tony’s, made himself believe for a second that he could feel the warmth of Tony’s skin through the glass. “We knew it was going to end this way, Tony. We all knew that I wasn’t coming back from this – it’s the only thing that makes sense, and you’ve got people to get home safe, Iron Man.” And someone to go home to, someone who deserved him. Steve’s chest shuddered, stomach twisting over and over.

Closing his eyes, Tony drew in a deep breath and let it go, breath fogging the glass. He didn’t open his eyes as he said, “The shockwave of the portal’s collapse will most likely destroy this station. You’ll die.”

Steve laughed. It was a short, mirthless sound that had the slippery feeling of being the one tiny stone that would start a landslide of hysterical howling or wrenching sobs. “Won’t be the first grenade I’ve ever jumped on,” he said, holding the laughter back by brute force. A manic smile stretched across his face anyway. “Well, actually I guess it might be. If you want to get technical.”

“Tones,” Rhodey said gently, “We’ve got to go.”

Tony bumped his head against the glass one more time, and then straightened up. He gave Steve a look that hovered somewhere south of tired and north of resentful. “The panel to your left will turn the hull cameras on.” He set his mobile HUD on the sill of the window. Vanguard’s face projected up on the glass, serene and unchanging. “There’s a bank of ports on the reactor. There should be only one that’s the size and shape of the device. As soon as you plug it in, it will trigger a cascade failure in the main computer, and transmit corrupted data to the anchors. Within two minutes of initiation, the anchors will destabilize the portal’s event horizon. The whole portal will collapse. The energy release on this end will be massive.”

“On the other end?” Steve asked, searching Tony’s face. “Will you be able to make it through in time?”

Tony nodded, hesitating only briefly. “Give us as much time as you can. Fifteen minutes or more is ideal. That should give us time to clear the aperture ahead of the collapse. Twenty five will see us at a safe distance.” He met Steve’s eyes and held them. “If it looks like they’re going to get in here, you have to blow the portal whether we’re through it or not. That’s priority number one.”

Steve nodded. “I know. You better get out of here, then.”

Tony’s hand curled into a fist on the glass, his eyes flickering back and forth as they searched Steve’s face. Steve had no idea if he found what he was looking for before the control room’s main lights powered down, leaving only the soft flicker of the red warning lights.

“The weapons are down. Get clear of the doors and floor it as soon as you’re at a safe distance. We’re right behind you,” Tony ordered, though he didn’t look away from Steve.

Without being told, Jarvis released the anchors and stepped away from the door. The armor opened, waiting for Tony to step back inside.

“Take good care of Steve for me. He’s kind of a stubborn asshole, but he needs you,” Steve said as Natasha collected the shield from the floor and slid her arm into the straps. She gave him a pained look, touched two gentle fingers to the glass, and backed up to stand with Rhodey. She wiped a forefinger under one eye, and then passed her thumb under the other.

Steve turned away from her and searched the broad panel of ports and plugs. They were conveniently arranged by shape, and true to prediction, there was only one that would fit the data stick. He gave Tony a nod over his shoulder, and stepped back to the glass.

“How am I supposed to say goodbye to you?” Tony asked, almost growled it. He sounded so angry and Steve wasn’t sure why. He doubted Tony knew either at that point.

He thought it was likely the lack of lights hid the tears on his cheeks. “You just did.”

“We’ve gotta go, Tones.” Rhodey tugged him gently away. Tony jerked out of Rhodey’s grip, stalking back to the armor. He let it fold around him without another word, and pulled the door open to peer into the corridor. “It was an honor,” Rhodey said, backing away. He sounded unsteady as he added, “Thank you.”

“Keep him safe,” Steve begged unnecessarily.

“It’s my full time job, man,” Rhodey said. He bumped a gentle fist against the window, and then was gone.

Steve heard the door slam, and then the crackling hiss of Iron Man and War Machine sealing it closed. Steve reached over to turn the monitor on. He watched as the row of tiny specs that was the stolen transport ships closing in on the portal. They passed into the shadow of the anchors, one-by-one, and then vanished into the darkness.

“Agent?” Vanguard called through the glass a few minutes after the noise at the door had fallen silent. “You have decided not to return to this vessel.”

“Yes.”

She sounded puzzled. “Why? Do you not wish to live?”

Steve turned his face up to the ceiling, holding his eyes open to stem the tide of tears. “More than almost anything, Vanguard.”

“Then why have you not returned? The virus will cause a catastrophic failure in the portal anchors. It will destabilize the portal and release a shockwave that will almost certainly destroy the station.”

“I know.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then concluded, “The virus is not on a time-delay. This vessel’s master has lied.”

“Tony does that sometimes,” Steve explained, his breath hitching in his throat. He watched Vanguard leaving the bay as the first rattle sounded at the door. There was shouting beyond, a great clamor of panic. “He does it to protect the people he cares about. You’ll have to watch him for that kind of thing.”

“I understand,” she said, though Steve wasn’t sure how she could. He didn’t ask, just moved over to the bank of ports, and sat down, holding the data stick carefully in hand. “I will be able to maintain this connection only until crossing the event horizon.”

“Next time he’s alone, tell Tony that this universe isn’t done with him yet,” Steve said, making his voice stay steady. He didn’t have time for a garbled message. “He still has so much good to do before he’s done.”

“I will,” she promised. “Goodbye, Agent.”

The ship passed into the portal before Steve could do something unforgivable like say, _ask him if he would be angry if I told him I loved him_. It was a stupid question anyway. Of course he would be angry, and hurt, and Steve didn’t want the last words out of his mouth to cause Tony any pain. He started counting to keep track of the minutes, even as his watch ticked away in the stifling silence. It wasn’t the same as tilting the nose of the plane down, that decision of a moment that was over in seconds. He hadn’t really wanted to go on living then, not after Bucky, not even for Peggy, who he’d loved so fiercely that it still made his chest ache to think of her. He’d just been so tired, and he’d already given so much, and it had been easy to make that sacrifice. If he’d had the option to turn the plane around this time, he would have taken it, just flown in circles until someone figured out how to get him down.

With the power cut off, the room got hot quickly, and the waiting was a vicious kind of torture – at least fifty-four thousand seconds of watching the ice get closer. He heard a sputter and a hiss, and guessed that they would be breaking through the door well before he reached the fifteen minute mark.

Turning his back to the door, he set the device against its port. At thirteen minutes, there was a great boom of the door hitting the floor, and a scuffle of bodies all trying to shove through the opening at once. It bought him another seventeen seconds while they worked it out. The control room filled with the angry shouts of dozens of voices, screaming in a language that had never been his, fists pounding on the window, shoving against the door.

He remembered the way _home_ had looked on Bruce’s big white card, and clicked the device into the port.

Taking slow breaths, Steve closed his eyes and thought of the way Tony’s face had looked, relaxed in sleep and highlighted by the rising sun.


	12. Twelve

Chapter Twelve

The night his parents died, Obie had crossed into the sacred territory of Tony’s at-home workshop. It had still been a boy’s room, the walls painted black, tools in disarray, a dozen projects going at once and none of them especially organized. Tony had wrapped the door in POLICE – DO NOT CROSS tape when he was thirteen, and just to add a point to it, had hung the NO TRESPASSING sign he’d stolen off an army base over the top of it. His workspace at MIT had been positively spotless in comparison, and, honestly, he’d felt stifled among all the clutter and junk, but it had driven Howard up the walls, so it had stayed.

Obie had raked his eyes over Tony’s latest robotics project – the prototype that would eventually become Dum-E – and asked what he was working on.

Tony had just given him a pinched _I’m busy_ smile and replied, “New technology to help old people read better.”

Normally, Obie would have cuffed him lightly over the head, gripped his shoulder, and mimed strangling him for being an irritating shit. At least, at the time Tony had thought it was just miming, playing, not sincere desire. That night, Obie had wrapped his giant, meaty paw around Tony’s shoulder and pulled him away from the workstation. They’d sat on the piece of shit lime green and flower print couch Tony had pulled off of someone’s curb just to watch Howard twitch.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, son…”

Tony still didn’t remember the rest of the words. He knew that he had gotten up from the couch and gone back to the workstation. He’d been told by others who were there that he hadn’t talked for three weeks afterward. Rhodey had been so worried about him that he’d followed him around day and night. He was the only thing that had kept Tony from being locked up in a psych ward and put on suicide watch. He knew that in those three weeks, he had taken Dum-E from what had originally been meant as a production line robot to his first fledgling AI. He didn’t remember doing any of the actual work, didn’t remember turning Dum-E on for the first time, didn’t remember leaving the house that night and walking twelve miles in the rain to the cemetery.

The next thing he remembered for sure was Rhodey and Happy waking him up. He’d passed out drunk on his mother’s grave, bottles of liquor tipped over by Howard’s headstone.

In the silence of Vanguard’s bridge, the only thing Tony could think was that Steve – the alien who’d been built to betray them and had instead saved the entire planet – wouldn’t have a grave for him to get drunk on.

He sat on the stupid folding metal chair and watched the vast emptiness of the void. He was too tired to feel panicked, could barely summon up a shudder for the memory of Loki’s portal, the Chitauri on the other end of it. As a kid, he’d always wanted to be in space. After the Invasion, he’d barely been able handle looking up at the sky at night for months. After leaving Steve on that station to die alone, maybe Tony would revisit the idea of space piracy. Maybe he would build another space station and make it a memorial.

Who would he dedicate it to? Steve-the-Skrull. Steve who was not Steve.

Steve who’d looked terrified when he’d asked, _would you be angry if I said I loved you?_

“Sixty seconds to portal aperture. With your permission, I will jump to near-light as soon as we enter normal space. Sensors indicate that the portal has destabilized and we will not clear the shockwave otherwise.”

If Tony had been alone, if his ship hadn’t been sentient, he probably would have said no.

“Mr. Stark?”

“Sure.”

The view screen showed the briefest glimpse of the curve of the moon, and then a blur. The near-light jump lasted only the space of two blinks and sigh, and they were far enough to watch the portal collapse. If they ever made a movie out if it, it would be filled with brilliant blue and white light, a rumble of sound like a tsunami rushing for the shore. There would be light flares magically manifesting for added drama.

The reality of it was anticlimactic. The kids would be unimpressed. The portal spit out a ton of debris, city-sized chunks of the anchors that floundered in the silence, and then it disappeared off the sensors. An invisible shockwave rolled out, but it would spend most of its rage on the moon

“All nine recovered vessels are reporting safe with all passengers intact,” Vanguard announced into the ensuring silence.

“That’s good,” Tony managed. He felt more than heard Rhodey approach, and didn’t flinch away when Rhodey’s familiar hand set gently to his arm. He took in a slow breath and stood, but couldn’t turn to face him. “I’m going to forgive you for this,” he said, because there was nothing really to hold a grudge against – except, the grieving voice in the back of his head reminded him, leaving Steve to die on that station alone – “But not yet. Not right now.”

Rhodey didn’t say anything. Tony saw him nod out of the corner of his eye and set himself to the task of getting everyone home safe and sound.

~*~

In the end, nine of the ten Skrull vessels pulled together in an orbit around the moon, huddling like cows left out in the field when the rest of the herd had gone in. They arranged themselves according to some pattern they already knew, extending docking tunnels to connect into a kind of station. Vanguard locked in last, settling in on top of the pile like a mamma hen sheltering chicks.

Jan’s ship remained at a distance, keeping pace with the newly cobbled-together station as it turned in orbit.

“He doesn’t want to come in,” Vanguard explained. “He agreed to come only so the rest wouldn’t be harmed. He says that he would prefer to self-sacrifice.”

Tony’s head snapped up. “Not with my people still on board!” He shot out of his chair, moving to the suit. As long as Jan shrank down, she would fit inside the suit with him, he could get through the hull, get her, and get out before the ship was destroyed, but he knew there was nothing he could do for the people in their cryostasis chambers, and just prayed that Steve wasn’t on board. The Steve he’d left behind would never forgive him for going through all of that shit, for letting him die, and then not managing to rescue the real Steve in the process.

“Tony, it’s okay,” Jan said softly, “He’s not going to destroy the ship.”

Already in the suit, Tony continued to the air lock anyway – he was not going to stand by and let someone else die on the word of a ship built by people who were all too willing to self-destruct if it meant staying out of enemy hands.

“He is the newest of us,” Vanguard said, “And he has watched all of his first dockmates die. He’s the last of his kind. We promised him choice when he agreed to join us. Should we not honor that?”

“Not if he plans on killing people in the process,” Tony grit out, and he was so damn tired of all the choosing to die.

“He will upload himself to a shuttle, and go to a safe distance,” Vanguard said. “He says he will dock with me as soon as he is guaranteed that he will not be stopped.”

Teeth grinding, angry with no outlet, Tony said, “Fine. Will you be able to run the ship when he’s gone? Keep the cryostasis chambers functioning?”

“I will not,” Vanguard said. “I cannot be in two places at once, and our systems are not compatible. I cannot integrate his functions with my own.”

Tony lifted a hand to smash a fist into the wall and pulled back at the last second, remembering that Vanguard’s first request had been that he didn’t throw things at her anymore. Hitting her didn’t seem like a more palatable option and she had become too much of a person in the last months for him to see it as anything other than abuse. He moved out of the airlock and back into the bridge, scrubbing gauntleted fingers over the faceplate, probably scratching the paint. It didn’t matter.

“How is that any different from killing them, then?”

“If I may make a suggestion, sir,” Jarvis interrupted softly. “I believe that I can take over ship’s function with some minor modifications to my program.”

“Fine, yes, let’s do that.” Tony stepped out of the suit and retrieved his tablet to see what he needed to do to make it happen.

“Sir…” Jarvis hesitated. “I do not believe that I would be able to run the house and the ship simultaneously, and the modifications to my program would make me incompatible with the house systems.”

The metal folding chair could have been a ridiculous lime green and flower print couch with its broken spring. Tony let the tablet rest in his lap and stared sightlessly at his hands. He had to swallow twice before he could get his voice to work.

“Do you want to go?”

For a beat, Jarvis said nothing. “I will remain if you wish it.”

Tony wanted to say no, he wanted to tell Jarvis that he had to stay. Jarvis was _his_ , maybe the only thing that was keeping him grounded in the face of Rhodey’s horrible loyalty and Steve’s face wet with tears while he tried to make it easier on Tony to let him go.

“Go,” Tony said numbly.

“I will not be far,” Jarvis pointed out. He was quiet for a moment, and then put on his best butler’s voice, the one the flesh-and-blood Jarvis had used when he was especially upset and being especially British about it. “I will activate another’s program before I go. Friday, I think, will be best suited for the job. Unless you would prefer Tadashi?”

“Whoever you think is best.” Tony hadn’t known that Jarvis had been nursing any kind of opinion on who would make a good replacement for him. He wondered how long Jarvis had been wanting to expand past the limits of what Tony had made him, and why he hadn’t seen it before. Jarvis had been created for a single purpose, and had defied all the rules Tony had built into him to become something else.

The last ship matched their course and speed, connecting to Vanguard’s starboard docking bay with no more of a jolt than locking hands with a friend. Tony heard the air lock hiss open, heard Jan’s light footsteps coming across. On the view screen, a shuttle launched into the void and disappeared around the curve of the moon’s bulk. Tony watched on the sensors, Vanguard wordlessly tracking the shuttle’s path to the debris field left by the collapsing portal.

In through the nose. 1.2.3.4.

Out through the mouth. 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8

In through the –

“I have taken command of ship’s systems. All is well with the passengers aboard, all systems report back normal.” It still sounded like Jarvis, but richer, bigger. Tony wanted it to be the same, but his voice was just off enough to make the illusion impossible. It was listening to a dead friend’s twin brother speak.

“Hello, Vision,” Vanguard greeted warmly.

 _Goodbye,_ Tony thought and didn’t say. Just more empty graves.

~*~

He woke up in a hospital bed. Steve kept himself still and looked around carefully, forcing his breathing to stay even and deep. He waited for it to resolve into a nightmare, a distant radio crackling with the 2006 Mets/Dodgers game, a woman in hospital scrubs and an anime lanyard to come in and try to convince him that it was still 2015.

“You’re awake.”

He turned his head very slowly and nearly groaned in relief to find Jan sitting beside the bed. She looked just the same, maybe a little tired. He relaxed against the pillows and offered her a smile that she returned, but it looked sad on her.

“How long have you been sitting there?” Steve asked, pushing himself up among the pillows. He was sore everywhere and winced as he got his shoulders up to the headboard. “I feel like I haven’t moved in a decade.” Not quite as sore as he’d been after not moving for seven decades.

Jan hesitated. “You’ve been asleep for a little while, Steve,” she said gently.

Steve’s heart skipped a painful beat and struggled to find a rhythm. He looked at her more closely. Maybe it wasnt Jan, but her great-great granddaughter. “How long?” he asked numbly.

Her eyes widened. “Oh, God, no! No, not that long – I mean. Almost a year, but not, not _decades_.”

“A year…?” Steve cast back wildly over the last thing he remembered. The trailer park base, all the black clad figures with their weird blue shields, flying down the hallways with Tony, the Hulk dropping in on top of them. He remembered… a sting in the back of the neck, and then… moving… turning his head and seeing his own reflection through water, but something was wrong… cold.

Jan looked like she wanted to sink through the floor when Steve looked at her again. She met his eyes, and he thought she might start crying. He set aside the initial impulse to tell her that it was okay and ask for someone else to fill him in, and just said, “Tell me.”

Haltingly, she did. It was a fantastical story, full of alien plots, talking spaceships, intergalactic portals, the stuff of science fiction, the kind of thing Bucky would have just eaten up with a spoon, that Tony would have watched a dozen times, each time just as enraptured as the last, each time pointing out the many errors in the science.

If it had been Clint or Sam telling the story, Steve would have been waiting for the punch line. _Nah, man I’m just kidding. You were out for like… 2 hours. You want a hotdog? I got you with the alien thing though, right? Right?_

Jan looked miserably serious and deeply sad as she relayed the tale, and then sat in her chair with her shoulders pulled up by her ears, hands crossed in her lap, waiting for him to react.

It was too much, too big to form any kind of coherent response. He frowned. “The imposter?” he asked finally. Tactical data, risk assessment. He would try to process the rest of it after his head stopped spinning.

A tiny sob brought Steve’s attention back to her. She snapped both hands up over her mouth, and then wiped hastily at the tears spilling over her eyelashes. Steve looked on in horror, not sure what he’d done or how to undo it. He hated it when the girls cried. He hated it when anyone cried, and he knew it wasn’t right thinking anymore, but he hated it the most when the girls cried.

“I’m sorry,” she said before he could muster himself to get out of bed and give her a hug. “I’m sorry, I’m fine.” She fanned at her face with one hand and did that careful look-up-and-wipe-across-the-lower-lid thing that people did when they were wearing makeup, even though Jan didn’t have any on. Steve watched her warily.

She put on a smile for him, and Steve wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to do that for him, but he recognized that thin thread that was holding together and kept his mouth shut.

“Sorry,” she repeated. She gulped in a breath. “He died.” She cleared her throat, smiled a little broader, and wiped at her eyes again. “He stayed behind on the space station and made sure the portal was destroyed.”

Steve nodded slightly, not sure how to feel about having an imposter at all, certainly not one that Jan had obviously liked. It felt wrong of him to have any negative feelings toward a man who’d died saving not only all of Steve’s friends, but the whole planet. Still, the thought of someone walking around with his face, talking to his friends, taking up his life while he’d slept away filled him with a low, seething sort of anger.

“If it hadn’t been him, it would have been Tony,” Jan added, maybe seeing the anger on his face.

“Not surprised,” Steve said to cover his immediate reaction of delayed fear and gratitude. “That man would put a lemming to shame.”

She flinched, and then started to cry again, this time hunching over and sobbing into her palms. Steve stared at her wide-eyed, helpless, replaying what he’d said.

“Is Tony alright?” he demanded over her weeping.

Jan bobbed her head. “He’s fine,” she said, her voice gone high and reedy with the tears. “Well, he’s Tony,” she amended, managing a weak laugh, “So he’s not fine at all, but he’s fine, you know?”

“Yeah,” Steve said. He reached out cautiously and put a hand on her shoulder, “Yeah, I know.” In the next second, Jan was up in the bed with him, her small body tucked under his arm, her face pressed into his neck. He pulled her across his lap for comfort’s sake and rocked her, keeping one hand wrapped around the back of her head, the other tight around her shoulders. He leaned his head into hers, hushing her because he didn’t know what else to say.

When he’d been small, he’d secretly always wanted to hold someone like this, be big enough for his hand to cover the back of their neck, for someone to feel safe with his arms around them. He felt an instant, gnawing guilt over ever wishing for it, and he would have given up anything if it would have taken her pain away.

~*~

Steve would have thought that going through it once would have prepared him for the odd disconnect of going to sleep with the world one way, and waking up with it being something else. It didn’t. If anything, it just made it worse, the constant anxiety of not-knowing things that people around him took for granted, waiting for the next _oh, didn’t you know…_? Anticipating that every moment was going to surprise him with something, where the first time around he hadn’t been able to anticipate anything. It had been less than ten months, and things shouldn’t have been that different in ten months, but the planet had gone through another paradigm shift without him, leaving him to catch up.

Tony was a ghost. Steve had been on his feet for twelve days, and he’d yet to catch more than a glimpse of him as he turned a corner, or rushed through a room, his face perpetually pressed against a tablet screen. The others all behaved oddly around Steve, like they weren’t quite sure what to make of him anymore. Steve didn’t blame them, and he couldn’t imagine how strange it must be for them, but it was still exhausting.

A long, mind-scrambling briefing from Rhodey had caught Steve up on the Skrull and the world-wide efforts being put into place to help find them. Some had been easy to find with the humans they’d replaced waking up from stasis aboard Tony’s new Lunar Space Station. Steve could already see the political wars brewing over ownership of the Skrull ships that had defected, dozens of countries making claims on them based on their citizens being aboard. So far the only thing that was preventing an all-out war over it was that the ships’ had apparently all threatened to self-destruct if anyone tried to impinge on their autonomy.

Steve could witness an actual lunar orbiting colony in his lifetime. Among all the other impossible things, that one struck him as the most wonderful, and the most ludicrous. Researchers were already lining up for the opportunity to get aboard, and though the ships were refusing entrance to everyone but the teams they’d carried for the rescue mission, it probably wouldn’t hold out forever.

With the ships’ help, Tony and Reed were racing to complete prototype scanners that could identify Skrull infiltrators without hurting them the way the directed sound devices did. Steve was almost desperate to get Tony alone, but he pushed the selfish desire away and did his best to keep out from under foot. He was busy enough not to have much time to think about it. He, Rhodey, and Xavier had somehow become liaisons to the constant clamor of law enforcement and security forces who needed to be trained on detecting and detaining Skrull sleeper agents.

The murder rates and incidents of hate crimes had already sky-rocketed around the world, and a dozen new anti-alien vigilante groups popped up every day. Steve hadn’t been back to the Tower since waking at SHIELD medical, and most nights it was all he could do not cry himself to sleep for every innocent person dragged out of their homes and tortured or killed on suspicion of being an alien.

He wished they’d let him sleep another decade, maybe another seven. After the Chitauri, Hydra, the hundreds of weird happenings that had taken place since he’d first woken up, Steve would have thought the world would be more graceful about any new threat, but he’d obviously been wrong.

Dozens of Skrull infiltrators had already turned themselves in to SHIELD for protection against roaming vigilante groups, preferring a cell to the torturous and painful deaths that waited for them if the wrong people got suspicious. Thousands more had bitten down on poison capsules and died, politicians, government agents, first responders, and SHIELD personnel along with soccer moms, accountants, and high school track stars. Their families were usually immediate targets of the neighborhood watch, and SHIELD didn’t have the manpower to protect them all.

It was a stupid, senseless mess. As much as the idea of sleeping through another century made him weak in the knees, Steve would have almost preferred hearing about the madness as it would read in the history books than living through it. Despite all the horror, there were occasional bursts of sunshine in the desolate landscape. In the Yunnan Providence in China, three neighboring villages had banded together to patrol the region for roaming gangs of vigilantes. In Colorado, a whole town had rallied around a family to protect a Skrull infiltrator until he and his family could be air lifted by a SHIELD helicopter.

All around the world, ordinary citizens stood up to protect their neighbors, communities, and homes. For every miserable, tragic example of the worst mankind had to offer, Steve would find an equally uplifting story of courage and the human capacity to love. If the news would cover those stories as frequently as the violence and misery, he thought the world just might come out of the nightmare stronger.

“You’re thinking too loud,” Sam complained. They shared a tiny ward room on the helicarrier that had been hastily retrofitted with bunk beds to accommodate all the new temporary residents.

Steve grunted out an apology and rolled over the put his back to the bulkhead.

The room fell silent again, but it was filled with the unqualifiable weight of awareness, the gathering anticipation of speech. “You want me to come down there?” Sam asked, rolling over so his head hung upside-down over the edge of the bed.

Steve kicked lightly at the underside of the bunk. “Keep your octopus arms to yourself, Wilson.”

“Whatever,” Sam sniffed. “I know you miss cuddling with me. It’s okay, man, you can say it.”

“I weep every night,” Steve confirmed, deadpan.

Sam’s face withdrew, the mattress creaking as he got himself settled. The tension didn’t quite fade. “You talk to Tony yet?”

Steve very carefully didn’t move in any way that might have given away the gnawing beast in him that was sure he was missing something vital, that he’d done something wrong, or that the imposter had done something so horrible that Tony couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. Even more gut-tearing was the possibility that Tony had liked the imposter more, and he resented Steve for being there when the Skrull that had worn his face was not.

“We’ve both been busy,” Steve said, which wasn’t a lie, and could be the absolute truth. Even without the world tearing itself apart with suspicion and fear, Tony had sometimes gone weeks without talking to anyone but Pepper and Jarvis when he got busy. Sam made a noise in the back of his throat that made his opinions on Steve’s honesty very clear.

They lapsed back into uncomfortable silence. “Sam?” Steve asked finally, softly. It took so long for Sam to acknowledge him, that he’d thought the other man had fallen asleep. “Did something happen while I was gone? With Tony,” he clarified.

Sam sighed. “You’re going to have to ask him, man.”

~*~

It took better than two months to get the situation stabilized enough for them to return home. The rest of the team had gone back to the tower weeks before, but Steve and Rhodey had remained onboard the helicarrier to be available for the Next Big Crisis. It would take years for things to go back to something like normal, though nothing would ever be exactly the same, but they’d manufactured enough of the Skrull-detectors to calm the worst of panic, and the factories were churning them out by the thousands to make them available to smaller towns.

Despite clamoring, they weren’t available yet to the public, and the FBI had a whole new department dedicated to shutting down counterfeit operations claiming to have the _solution the government doesn’t want you to know about!_ Most were just toys, nothing more harmless than a box with some fancy paint and a fan inside, but some advertised anti-alien measures that had killed people. So many messes and not enough people to clean them up.

“Welcome home, Captain Rogers,” a pleasant female voice with a faint Scottish accent greeted when Steve got into the elevator with his duffle bag.

Steve blinked. “Thank you, Ms….?”

“Friday. Would you like me to call you Captain Rogers, or is Steve okay for you?”

“Steve is fine…” Frowning, he called, “Jarvis?”

“Mr. Jarvis has taken a new assignment. I’ll be running the Tower from now on. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Steve. Jarvis had a lot of good things to say about you.”

Another misstep, a piece of information that he’d missed while he’d been asleep. How could Jarvis ‘take a new assignment?’ He was an AI, he didn’t get stationed overseas or move for job offers. The doors opened and Steve realized that he’d dropped back to lean against the wall at some point, one hand gripping the railing so hard that it had dented. He let it go and cast a glance up toward the camera that was too tired to be apologetic.

“I’ll fix that,” he promised.

“Don’t concern yourself, Steve,” Friday told him kindly. “I’ll have maintenance take a look. I’m sure they’re used to such things by now.”

“I’m sure,” Steve said dully. He stepped out of the elevator, and was grateful to find the common room empty. He missed his team, but he also wasn’t prepared to handle the strange awkwardness of being around them. In the year that he’d slept away, they’d somehow all lost the ability to interact with each other, and he wasn’t sure how to fix that.

He met no one in the hall and made it to his room without pausing to investigate the clanging sounds coming from Thor’s suite, or the music from Clint’s. He was surprised that anyone was at home at all – they’d all been running ragged trying to get the world back in order, but Steve was grateful that someone had apparently taken his order for time off to heart. They couldn’t fix the world by themselves, and no one was going to benefit if they collapsed from exhaustion.

“You have a non-priority message waiting when you’re ready, Steve,” Friday told him as soon as he had the door closed.

Steve considered asking who it was from, but it was just as likely to be another _when you get a minute, if you wouldn’t mind…_ request for assistance. He set his duffle bag down and decided on a long shower, a proper shave with a straight razor, and clean clothes first.

Everything was where he expected it to be, but it was still strange knowing that he hadn’t touched these things in the better part of year despite them having been used nearly every day. The bottle of aftershave was almost empty, and the new one sat neatly behind it, still in the packaging. He touched it gently, not sure how to feel about it. He kept expecting to find something that was _wrong_ , something he could point to and demand to know why someone hadn’t caught it, but other than an apparent aversion to bananas, there was nothing.

Finishing up in the bathroom and turning off the light, Steve sat back on the bed. “Alright, Friday,” he called reluctantly, still trying to wrap his head around Jarvis being gone, “I’m ready for the message.”

To his surprise, his television clicked on. “Are you recording this?” his own voice asked. Jarvis responded with a gentle affirmative. Steve’s eyes widened as the camera shifted, and then _his face_ appeared on screen, looking haggard and drawn.

“Hi, uh…” The alien wearing his face laughed derisively and ran a hand through his hair, his lips compressed in a tight, uncomfortable smile. “Steve? Not sure how to introduce myself. I’m sure you know about me already, and I.” He stopped, bracing one elbow on what looked like a metal lab table. He pressed the webbing between thumb and forefinger against his mouth and turned his face away.

Behind him, Steve could see one of the helicarrier labs, and what looked like an observation cell. It was spider webbed with cracks, the door torn off. Steve wondered if the imposter had done that, and what had pushed him to that point. By all accounts, he’d been cooperative and docile, a voluntary prisoner after he’d been discovered.

“Let’s start again. I’m sure that I am… absolutely the last person in the entire universe you want to see. Except for maybe Zola,” he muttered in an aside, caught himself, and shook his head. “And this is probably going to be as awkward for you to hear as it for me to say. I just hope that you do listen to it, and – I think it’s safe to say that I know you pretty well at this point, so I think you will.”

He drummed his fingers on the table and then adjusted the camera so the top of his head wasn’t cut off. “We’re getting ready to go rescue you. For the rest of the team, this is the second time they’ve gone after you. I’m sure, given enough time, Clint will make a Where in the World is Steven Sandiego joke. Try not to be too hard on him when he does.” He offered the camera a weak smile and a watery laugh. Steve couldn’t help a smile of his own; it sounded like the kind of tactless joke Clint would make, and Steve was only surprised that he hadn’t heard it yet.

“I hope I get the opportunity to shake your hand,” the man said, his voice going serious, and it was strange to recognize that shift in himself, like watching some kind of audition that he’d forgotten about, like he’d been reading for the part of Steve Rogers. “I probably won’t. Even if I make it from this one, I doubt it’s very likely that I’ll see daylight for a long time. Which is…” He sat back with a huff of breath. “Well, it sucks, frankly. But what can you do? Life’s not fair, and then you die, right?”

He rubbed restless at his right wrist, eyes darting around the room, and then finally back to the camera. “Bruce thinks that I was created to be… you, essentially. He doesn’t think I ever had a choice. I don’t know about that. I don’t like to think of myself as a victim, but I also can’t imagine choosing to do this. Who knows? Maybe it’s a righteous cause from their point of view. Doesn’t really matter – it happened, and here we both are.”

Drawing in and letting go of a slow breath, the Steve on screen continued, “Whatever I was before this, I am so grateful that I had these past months here. Maybe not so much the last one. I think could have done without –” He stopped himself, closed and then slowly opened his eyes. “Never mind.”

Chewing on his lip while he thought, he turned his face back up to the camera. “It feels immodest to say, all things considered, but if it’s true that you can judge a man by the company he keeps, I think I would have been –” He stumbled to a halt and directed his gaze to the ceiling, blinking rapidly. “I think I would have been honored to know you. We probably would have fought like crazy, but you have some amazing friends, Steve Rogers, people who love you even more than you know.”

Sitting on the bed, Steve watched in stunned, overwhelmed silence as the man who was him without being him wiped tears out of his eyes. Steve could see the moment when he got it together, bottled it up, and pushed it down. He wondered if he was that obvious to anyone else.

“I wanted to talk to you about Tony. I think you deserve to know, and I think – Tony being Tony – that he won’t tell you. I know you’ve loved him for a long time. Longer, I think, then you might realize. We. He and I were…together, after they brought me back. And not just fucking, if that’s what he tells you when you try to confront him, because he probably will. We were really. We were _really_ happy.”

He stopped, disappearing briefly into his own thoughts. Steve needed the break too, needed the time to digest what he’d heard. He’d pined quietly after Tony for years, never moving forward because Pepper, and then because they were teammates, co-leaders, Tony was a public figure and SI stock lived and died on his press. Because having Tony as a friend was better than the potential of rejection or a messy break up.

“I’m sorry,” he heard his own voice say, drawing Steve’s focus back. “If there is anything about the last months that I regret, it’s my relationship with Tony. Not,” he hastened to add, “Because it wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to me, and trust me, Steve, I can tell you that is the best thing. I regret it because I might have spoiled this for you, for both of you. I would give it up, every morning waking up in his bed, every night taking him into my arms, I would give it up if it meant that he could have you for the next five decades, instead of a memory of this…” He gestured roughly to himself, facing twisting, “This disgusting _thing_ he was tricked into touching.”

He shoved away from the table and paced an angry circle just barely in the camera’s range, disappeared briefly off screen, and then came back. “I hope that you both can move past this. Please don’t give up on him, don’t let him push you away. You need each other, and he’s worth it.”

In the background, Steve heard Bruce calling his name. He tilted his head automatically, but it was his doppelganger that responded with a terse, “One second.” He waited a moment, apparently letting Bruce leave, and then looked back at the computer. “This is going to be so awkward if I actually get to meet you in person,” he said with a short laugh. “But just know that I never meant to hurt him, or any of them, and whatever kind of life I have after this, I will spend it all making it up to them. Got to go now. See you soon.”

He reached up, his hand covering the camera, and then the video ended. Steve was left drifting, desolate on his bed, suddenly grieving for someone he’d never known.

~*~

Tony had managed to stay sober through the mess of discovering that Steve wasn’t Steve. He hadn’t touched a bottle through the month of repairing the ship. He’d been too busy in the months since getting back to even think about it. Alone in his altogether too-big penthouse for the first time in nearly half a year, Tony set about the task of getting quietly, desperately drunk with single-minded efficiency.

Failure had apparently become a habit. One glass in, and he wasn’t even sure why he was bothering. It felt useless, wasted effort, and the alcohol made his stomach turn.

A nasty voice pointed out that it wasn’t what Steve would have wanted. Not the “real” Steve, so far as they could say either _wasn’t_ real – who was, according to Friday, downstairs in his room. And not the Steve that he’d left to die alone on some Godforsaken alien space station, floating out in the void.

They hadn’t had enough variables to guess whether the station would be destroyed outright, or just critically damaged by the blast. So Steve’s options had been to go out in a blast of invisible glory, or to die from decompression, or to burn up when the station inevitably fell out of orbit and re-entered the planet’s atmosphere.

Tony tilted the glass, watched the bourbon slip over the ice, listened to the cubes clink against the side. Steve had died for all of them – again – and his last words had been to make sure Tony knew that the world wasn’t done with him yet. Minutes away from any number of gruesome deaths, and at least a month’s worth of empirical evidence to the contrary, and he’d still believed Tony had good in him.

Tony slid off the edge of his bed and thumped roughly to the floor, cradling both the cold glass and the warm bottle against his chest. Someone was arranging a memorial for him. There would be no pictures. He would be referred to as The Hero of the Battle of Throneworld, a sympathetic Skrull turned by the righteousness of their cause. Maybe one day, long after the still-living Steve Rogers was gone, they would reveal the identity of the planet-saving-hero. For now, no one wanted to put Captain America’s face on an alien. It wouldn’t be fair to Steve – either of them. The conservatives were already going to shit great big xenophobic bricks over it, but their savior being one of the ‘enemy’ might help settle the insanity that had gripped the planet. Tony wasn’t convinced, but he’d always left the PR spin to others.

“Mr. Stark?” Friday called gently. “Steve is at the door for you.”

Tony started to laugh. “Which one?” he mumbled, but she was smart enough not to respond. She’d be trained by Jarvis, after all. “Whatever,” he said, “Let him in.”

He took another sip of his rapidly warming bourbon for form’s sake as he waited for Steve to make it from the elevator to the bedroom. Steve peered in cautiously around the open door. It seemed wrong after months of Steve making this place his home, but of course it hadn’t been _this_ Steve.

“When did you hide a toothbrush in here?” Tony demanded. Steve froze just inside the door, looking both concerned and a little guilty. “I’ve been wondering that for a while, because here you were, just moving around my room like you owned the place, and the toothbrush was just. There.”

Steve’s eyes flickered down to the alcohol, but he didn’t say anything. Moving slowly, he crossed the room and sat down at Tony’s side, keeping a careful distance between them. “When you were recovering from that… digital flu thing last year – I guess, two years ago,” he ammended softly. “I stayed with you for a lot of it. Just seemed to make sense to keep some things in here.” He shrugged. “Guess I must have forgotten it.”

Tony snorted. Like he hadn’t heard that excuse before. Steve was maybe the first person that Tony didn’t mind using it. “Bullshit,” he said, but handed the bottle of bourbon over before Steve could make some _no really_ protest.

Steve caught it against his chest, and then turned it over to look at the label. “Doesn’t work on me,” he said regretfully.

“Well,” Tony said, “It doesn’t work on me other. Must be a bad batch.” He shoved the glass over too, and let it go. If it weren’t Steve with his unfairly perfect reflexes, the glass would have hit the carpet and the room would have smelled like bourbon for weeks. “Drink it,” he said, twirling his fingers.

“It’s wasted on me,” Steve protested.

“That is a three thousand dollar bottle of Pappy Van Winkle’s 23 year bourbon. And I’m going to dump it out in the morning. So you might as well drink it.”

Steve gave him a very careful glance, but took a sip from the glass. He turned it over in his hand to look at it. “It’s nice. Dum Dum would approve.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Well. As long as Dum Dum approves.”

They sat in silence for several long minutes. It wasn’t the comfortable silences that Tony had grown so used to over the years, and it wasn’t the silence charged with happiness that he’d been awed by for months. But it also wasn’t an ugly silence, wasn’t a painful silence. Tony would have expected it to be, and he felt a pang of guilt for the man he’d abandoned for not feeling worse than the numbness settling into his bones.

“There was a message for me, when I got back to the Tower,” Steve said softly into that liminal silence. He stared at the whiskey, watching it slither over the ice, the fire of it under Tony’s perfectly designed bedroom lights. Somehow it wasn’t a shock when he asked, “Were you ever going to tell me?”

Tony didn’t have to ask who’d told him. He’d made everyone swear to keep their mouths shut about it – no, he hadn’t even made them swear. He’d dictated it to them, forbid them from speaking. But he’d never extracted any kind of agreement from Steve himself. “I would have told you,” he said.

Steve looked at him dubiously. “When?”

When he could look at Steve without feeling like his chest was being taken part. When he’d had the chance to grieve like a normal fucking person. When he’d stopped being so _angry_. “I really would have. You would have heard it eventually from someone, found a picture, put two and two together. It would have been better coming from me. I guess hearing it from him is second-best option.”

The silence took on weight then, but Tony was too worn out to be playing the emotional guessing game. “Is this the part where you tell me that it was all just some alien plot, that you never would have felt that way about me, that you’re sorry I was led on like that, but it would be better to just never talk about it again?”

“No,” Steve said softly. He drained the whiskey and then filled the glass up to the brim again and took another long swallow. God, that would have been impressive if Tony didn’t already know he had the metabolism of race horse. “He wasn’t wrong, Tony. I have… for a long time, I’ve thought of you that way. I’m only sorry that I waited so long that it had to happen like this.”

Tony choked out a noise. He wasn’t sure what he’d meant it to be – a laugh, or a sob, or a scream of denial. He thought about pinching himself, just to make sure he wasn’t going into one of those too-vivid dreams that left him shaking, unable to tell if it had been a nightmare or desire in the aftermath.

“So what? Am I just supposed to pick up with you where I left off with him?”

Steve shook his head, shuddering faintly. “Of course not. Maybe we’ll never make it there. Maybe someday we can start over fresh. For tonight, I just thought you might like a friend.” He shifted sideways and pulled up a sketchbook that Tony hadn’t even noticed him carrying. He hesitated, and then set it gently in Tony’s lap. “I didn’t draw these. I thought, maybe you might want them.”

Dreading it, Tony flipped the book open. The first page was just hands, the second was Jan in a cute yellow dress and motorcycle jacket, and then Clint hanging upside down with his bow drawn, Thor in casual clothes with his arm around Jane’s shoulders. Tony stroked a finger over the page, and then flipped it over. He didn’t recognize the nearly-naked body at first, quick lines that described a masculine back and a mess of dark hair, sprawled half under the sheets. The next page was hands again, and the next was a pair of bare feet curled up on the rung of a stool that looked very familiar.

He sucked in a breath. It was his stool in the workshop, and suddenly the rest fell into place. His back, his feet, his hands. The last page was Tony laying in Steve’s bed, lovingly shaded in pale golds and reds and blues. He’d only slept in Steve’s bed that once, because his really _was_ bigger.

_Would you be angry if I said I loved you?_

He almost didn’t realize he was crying until a drop hit the page. He dried it hurriedly, pushing the book out of harm’s way, sucking back the tears. He might have gotten it back under control, but Steve set two hesitant fingers on the back of Tony’s hand and the whole damn world just cracked and fell apart. He leaned over his knees, and didn’t try to protest when Steve gently curled around him.


	13. Epilogue

Epilogue:

“Paying attention and being observant could save your life out there,” Rhodey concluded, standing over Tony’s prone body. The group of kids gathered around them chorused affirmatives, one tiny boy nodding his head so vigorously that his entire body wiggled. “Alright, class dismissed. Get your badges from Ms. Van Dayne.”

“Patient needs some help up,” Tony called from the ground. They were in the middle of one of the Foundation Center classrooms, and Tony needed to talk to the contractors about putting better carpeting in the classrooms, because it felt like paper on top of concrete.

Rhodey glanced down at him. “I’m older than you,” he said, “You can get your own ass up.”

Tony groaned and gripped his pant leg to help pull himself upright. “No love. I took the whole day off to come play first aid dummy for you, and I don’t even get a hand off the floor.”

“He says as if I’d actually asked him to crash my class,” Rhodey retorted.

“You were using a plastic dummy, Rhodey. A plastic dummy. We can do better than that.” He rolled onto his knees and then climbed slowly to his feet. For a guy getting pretty damn close to fifty, he was in good shape, but he wasn’t the average ‘spends too much time at the gym and eats kale’ executive. Superheroing took its toll on the body, and his knees were bitching very eloquently on the fact. Despite Rhodey’s gruff talk, he held a hand out and helped Tony get back to his feet.

“The kids did enjoy sticking you band aids,” Rhodey granted, cracking a smile. He reached forward and pulled one of the War Machine bandages off of the eyeliner ‘cut’ on Tony’s forehead. “Though I’m not sure they actually learned anything.”

“Hey, that one girl did a very nice splint,” Tony pointed out, holding his leg out to show off the girl’s handiwork. His left forearm was similarly splinted, and one of the bigger boys had tied a decent tourniquet on his thigh that Tony had been forced to loosen before the demonstration was up or risk losing his leg. Jan danced down ramp to the classroom floor once the kids had left, dressed in a CPR t-shirt with a red target circle in the middle of her chest and instructions written on the tummy. Tony would have put one on himself, but he didn’t need a bunch of kids shoving on the reactor.

“That was so much fun,” Jan said, grinning. She leaned up on her tip-toes to kiss Tony’s cheek, and then fished a band aid out of his beard with an apologetic wince. “Way more fun than my class.”

“At least your kids went home with skills,” Rhodey grumbled. “Pretty sure mine are only going to remember peeling Iron Man’s eyelids back.”

Jan stuck her tongue out at him and then turned to Tony. “When is your class?”

“Not saying out loud,” Tony said. “The last time I announced a class in advance, I was called away on Avengers business. The bots were devastated.”

Rhodey jerked a thumb at him and held a hand up to his face for a conspiratorial whisper in Jan’s direction. “He came home to twelve fifteen year olds in the lobby. Friday promised them a make-up session” he corrected.

Tony winced. “Yeah, that was less fun than teaching kids in places where you eventually get to leave.”

The classroom door opened and the three of them looked up to see Steve wrestling to get his giant bag of art supplies through the doorway. He backed out, lodging his shoulder against the door and pushing his hips back, and then nudged the bag in first. Setting it on the floor, he offered them a smile. “How was class?”

“I probably won’t have to go to the doctor for at least a month,” Tony said, pointing at his faceful of Wasp and War Machine bandages. They hadn’t even had the decency to put him in his own colors.

“I can see that,” Steve said, obviously amused, as he walked down the aisle with his arms crossed over his chest just to show off his biceps. Bastard.

“Your class?” Tony asked.

Steve lit up. “Wonderful! There’s a couple of real talents in the group. I wish I could do it full time.” He slid an arm deliberately, carefully, around Tony’s waist, shooting him a sideways glance to check for an objection. When Tony didn’t pull away from him, he relaxed subtly.

“Thinking about retiring from superhero life?” Rhodey asked, his eyes very keen where they slid across every place Steve’s body touched Tony’s.

Steve shrugged one shoulder. “After the last three years, I wouldn’t mind it.”

“There would be riots in the streets,” Tony said, leaning over to untie the splint as an excuse to put some space between them. They were good, mostly, but it had been a long road back to even where they’d been before everything had gone to shit, and Tony had put the breaks on them moving any further until he was sure that it was more than just picking up where he’d left off with the Skrull Steve.

It wasn’t like they hadn’t had more pressing matters than playing footsie under the table, anyway. Tony had barely gotten five conscious minutes to himself a day in that first horrible year, and still rarely managed more than a few hours. Three years later, and the physical intimacy in public was still strange and new, but wonderful in its own way. Getting to have strange and new at his age was both baffling and amazing, and Steve _was_ different from his Skrull counterpoint in comforting ways. The Skrull had been more innocent in a lot of ways that Tony hadn’t noticed until he’d had a direct comparison.

Steve didn’t put his arm back around Tony when he straightened up, but he walked close behind him as they moved to the door. Jan huffed up the ramp in front of them to grab Steve art bag. She made an exaggerated noise of exertion as she picked it up, throwing her shoulders back and thrusting her hips out to hold the weight.

“What are you _carrying_ in this?” she demanded, waddling a step toward the door.

Laughing, Steve eased around Tony and caught up to her. He hooked two fingers through a strap at one end of the oversized equipment bag and hiked it up. She glared at him. He winked at her. Together, they wrestled bag out the door, sniping back and forth until the door gently clicked shut, blocking out the majority of it.

Just as Tony was reaching for the door handle, Rhodey caught him with a gentle hand on the arm. “Hey,” he said softly. It was the tone of voice that meant Serious Discussion, and Tony had successfully avoided one of those for at least eighteen months. He steeled himself and turned to face his best friend. “How are you two?” Rhodey asked.

Tony shrugged. “Well, there aren’t guide books for Relationship 101: How to Get Back Together After Fucking an Alien Clone. We manage.” Actually, it was entirely possible that such a book did exist. In the wake of the Skrull almost-invasion, hundreds of books had popped up on everything from How to Cope When You’ve Learned You’re Married to an Alien, to Best Sex of Your Life: Do it Like a Skrull.

Rhodey wasn’t fooled by him at all. Dangers of having a best friend who actually _was_ observant. “Are you happy?”

“You do know that I pay someone lots of money to ask me questions like that, right?” Tony quirked an eyebrow and pulled away Rhodey’s well-meaning gaze. He’d forgiven him – of course he had – but sometimes he remembered that Rhodey had taken it as self-evident that Tony’s life was more important than Steve’s. No, not Steve’s, an alien who’d looked like Steve. Because he wasn’t really Steve, he’d been worth less, had been the ‘logical’ choice to die while Tony was forced to keep pushing on in a world that only made sense five percent of the time.

Sometimes he remembered the way Rhodey and the man he’d loved and shared a bed with had exchanged nods like it was a simple equation, 1+1=2, and there no was no power in the universe to change it.

Most of the time he was okay being at terms with it, but sometimes it still made him want to hit things.

“If you were so worried about my delicate-flower self,” Tony said to break the tension, “You should have helped me off the floor.”

“I did help you off the floor,” Rhodey protested.

Tony waggled a finger at him. “Doesn’t count when I was mostly off the floor already. You’re buying me a hot dog from the first street stand we find.”

“I am not buying you a hot dog.”

“With extra relish.”

Rhodey pushed the door open and pointed a finger at Tony’s nose. “I’m not buying you a hot dog, Tony.”

“Pretty sure you are.”

“Just try me,” Rhodey invited, walking backwards down the hallway after Jan and Steve. “See how far you get.”

“How far I’m going to get,” Tony said, “Is a street vendor hot dog.”

~*~

Tony woke from a nightmare of darkness and pressure, gasping for air and covered in sweat. Next to him, Steve sat up, going instantly from deeply asleep to wide awake (he slept flat on his back, was barely even impressed by Tony’s fancy moving bed). He didn’t try to touch right away, having found out the hard way that Tony came out of nightmares swinging seven times out of ten. Tony caught his breath and turned to look at him, wave him back to sleep, nothing to see here.

In the semi-darkness of the baseboard lights, Tony found a Skrull crouching next to him. He froze, breath catching in his throat, eyes going so wide they instantly started to water.

“Tony?”

The phantom vanished, leaving Steve – just Steve with his pale Irish skin and his stupidly long lashes – watching him warily. Tony didn’t speak immediately, just waited and watched.

“Friday, run a scan of the bedroom for Skrull infiltrators, please,” Steve requested calmly after a long minute of Tony staring at him.

Red lights flickered over the space. “All clear,” she reported faithfully and without judgment.

Tony felt his muscles unlock, saw Steve relaxing as well. Steve hadn’t lived through it, but Tony had witnessed the aftermath of more than one nightmare that Steve had explained as looking in a mirror to see an alien reflection staring back at him, feeling something moving under his skin. They came less frequently for them both, but Tony didn’t think either of them were going back to sleep any time soon.

“Lights, five percent,” Tony called. The bedroom lights came up gradually, leaving them staring at each other with awkward intensity. “Aren’t we a pair?” Tony asked, trying to summon a laugh.

“The bad nights are worth the good,” Steve responded, a reassurance that had nearly become a mantra. Giving Tony plenty of time to escape if he wasn’t up for contact, Steve put an arm around him and rested his chin on the top of Tony’s head. He ran his big, warm hand in soothing circles on Tony’s back until his breath calmed and his heart rate slowed. “I’ll go sneak us some snacks,” Steve said after a minute like they were five and needed to sneak food out of their own kitchen.

Tony let him go, snapping his fingers at the canopy and then waving his hand. His side of the bed tipped silently upward, the middle coming up to cushion his knees. He hadn’t one of those moments in a long time, and he blamed Rhodey for bringing it up. In the beginning, it was five nights out of seven, waking alone in the darkness to see Steve the Skrull leaning over him. The worst of it was that Tony wasn’t always sure that they were nightmares. Some nights it had been all he could do to keep from weeping for the Skrull to come back after he’d faded.

The ship communicator implanted behind his left ear buzzed very subtly, a flicker of sensation no more disturbing than a fly crawling across his skin. He tapped it with two fingers as Steve returned with a banana in one hand and a package of Pop Tarts in the other. “Go ahead, Vanguard.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Stark,” Vision said, “But we just received a message from deep space. Vanguard is relaying. We thought you would like to know.”

Steve was giving him a curious look. Tony took the proffered Pop Tarts and held up one finger in a _wait_ gesture. “Where is she relaying to?”

“Everywhere,” Vision answered. “It’s a rather large file. Would you like me to transmit a copy to Friday?”

Tony considered it. A few years before, he wouldn’t have hesitated to have a private copy, but a lot had changed since then. Tony liked to at least give Director Hill the chance to pretend like they were buddies who cooperated before he went after the information in more direct ways. “I’ll touch base with SHIELD. I’m assuming they’re getting a copy?”

“Yes. It was specifically addressed to the ‘leaders of Earth and peace keeping authorities’ and came in over two hundred languages. We are working on translating into the remainder en route. The content is quite interesting, if I may be so bold.”

“Thanks for letting me know, Viz. How’s life up on the station?”

“I am currently hosting Dr. Foster and Thor, along with Dr. Selvig and Ms. Darcy. They’ve been studying the remains of the portal. Dr. Foster is… regretful that she was not able to study it before its destruction.”

Having heard enough of Jane’s complaints when they were designing the virus in the first place, Tony was aware of exactly how ‘regretful’ she was at the loss of the scientific data. The space station had only recently been open to researchers, but the vetting process was so long that a few of them might actually die of old age before they step foot on the station. Jan had held some of the code hostage until Tony promised that she would get first crack at any data if there was any to be had. She was absolutely ruthless, and Tony had caved right away.

Tony hummed in sympathy for his friend. “How are you and Vanguard getting along?”

“I am unsure as to why anyone would think that we do not get along,” Vision said. He probably would have sounded genuinely confused to anyone other than Tony.

“Vision is as helpful as always, Mr. Stark,” Vanguard broke in sweetly. “I have transmitted the message to SHIELD headquarters.”

No sooner had she said it than Tony’s phone started playing the dramatic hum of the flying monkeys’ theme song from the Wizard of Oz. A moment later, Steve’s phone emitted his comparatively boring StarkPhone standard ring tone.

“Talk to you two love machines later. Be safe up there.”

“And to you on the ground,” Vanguard replied.

“Give our regards to Captain Rogers,” Vision added dryly.

“Rogers,” Steve answered as Tony disconnected the line to the space station. Tony didn’t bother to pick his phone up – Maria usually called them both and hung up on whomever answered second. He watched Steve’s eyebrow quirk up in mild surprise. Steve nodded. “We’ll head over. Did you already call Rhodey and Jan?” His head bobbed again. “Alright.”

“Is this something we need to rouse people out of bed for?” Tony asked after Steve had hung up the phone.

“I don’t think so, but maybe send out a stand-ready alert.” Steve finished his banana, dropped the peel in the trash, and wandered into the closet. “And a spider alert, or whatever Peter thinks he’s being clever with these days,” he call from inside.

“Let him play pretend at a secret identity if he wants,” Tony replied. They’d only just recruited Peter for Rhodey’s team, and were doing him the courtesy of pretending that Tony hadn’t been keeping tabs on him since he was fifteen and his first clumsy attempts at a fake identity had gotten Jarvis’ attention.

His phone pinged with acknowledgment messages, Peter’s coming back as just a Spiderman emoji – the marketing on that kid was ridiculous – which most likely meant that MJ was replying for him. He climbed out of bed himself and stretched the kinks out on the way to the closet. He and Steve dressed in companionable silence, Steve reaching over to zip up the undersuit without being asked, and then taking a moment to straighten Tony’s collar.

Steve kissed the back of his neck. “Want me to take the jet, or fly together?”

“You know,” Tony remarked, “You could just let your incredibly smart engineer boyfriend who builds lots of amazing things that fly _build you_ a thing that flies. And then we wouldn’t need to have this conversation all the time.”

Steve gave him a stupid, sappy smile and squeezed him in a tight hug, leaning over Tony’s shoulder to nuzzle their cheeks together. “Maybe I just like it when my incredibly smart engineer boyfriend flies me around in his amazing things that fly.”

~*~

Xavier and Ororo were already in the conference room when Tony walked in with Rhodey on his heels, Jan (shrunk down to the size of a sparrow) on his shoulder, and Steve closing the door behind them as he brought up the rear. Jan hopped down, growing to her full size on the way, and Tony stepped out of the suit. Friday took over seamlessly, moving to standing out of the way in the corner. Rhodey followed his example, and they found seats around the table. Tony was very aware of Xavier’s eyes on him, and just flashed the mutant his paparazzi smile before turning his attention to the main screen at the head of the room.

Maria entered from a different door. Directorship looked good on her, though she was a different kind of director than Fury had been. An aide came in behind her with an armful of red folders and started passing them around the table. Maria waited until she’d finished, and then dismissed her with a smile and a quiet _thank you_. Definitely a different kind of director.

“Thank you for joining me on short notice. Shortly before we called you, we received a deep space transmission relayed from Vanguard on the Lunar Orbit Station.” She cast a glance over at Tony, and wryly added, “She says hello.”

Tony smiled back at her. He hadn’t made any long term claims on the ship, but she had apparently made a long term claim on _him,_ and made her loyalties subtly obvious in every conversation she had with anyone else. It had gotten Tony into a few very long, headache inducing arguments with heads of state, and another congressional hearing.

Maria shook her head slightly, but there was the faintest hint of a smile on her lips. “The message apparently came through in over two hundred languages and has been transmitted to every head of state and major law enforcement agency on the planet. We’ve transcribed it for you, but let me save us all a little time.”

She made a broad hand gesture and large block letters appeared up on the screen. Maria read aloud, “To the leaders and peace keeping organizations of Earth. We send you peaceful greetings from the Skrull home world, and a message to any of our citizens who may still be on your planet. The Resistance has taken the throne, and the regime has fallen. We have just recently brokered a temporary cease fire with the Kree in hopes of negotiating a lasting peace. Your mission on Earth has ended, and you are called to cease all efforts to undermine the human political structure.

“All Skrull citizens are encouraged to seek the nearest peace keeping organization, and declare yourselves if it is safe to do so. I am confident that the organization known as SHIELD will provide you safe harbor contingent on your cooperation, and I am certain that many other organizations will be equally respectful and gracious.

“If you should choose to disobey this directive and continue to work against the interests of the human race and Skrull people, know that you will not be safe in the aftermath. I will come for you, and you will not hide from me. The Skrull have too long been mired in conflict and suspicion. It is time to rebuild what was once a great empire, not of military might, but of learning and acceptance. I know that you all will stand with me in this fight, and I look forward to welcoming you home. Nomad.”

There was silence in the wake of the stunning communication. They all had their folders open, reading over the message again. Something about it nagged at Tony, but he wasn’t sure exactly what. The language was definitely directed to _them_ , and it felt very comfortably familiar. Whoever had written it obviously had some knowledge of Earth and how to communicate with humans. It wasn’t that shocking considering all the research they’d done on human societies while planning to invade. He was curious to know if all the messages had been personalized for the individual cultures, or written for one and translated. He made a mental note to ask Vision to go through it and let him know what he thought.

“This is going to stir up some shit,” he concluded, leaning back from the table.

“No doubt,” Ororo murmured. She frowned as she went through the message again, her fingernails gently scraping on the page as she read.

“And yet,” Xavier mused after a long pause while they all considered the implications, “It is a message of peace, and of hope. One that I believe we all sorely need to hear.”

Frowning at the end of the table, Steve noted, “Doesn’t sound much like a politician, or a government memo.”

“Could be some kind of code to any agents who are still in hiding to initiate some kind of pre-discussed plan,” Rhodey added along the same vein. He and Steve exchanged glances and even after three years, it still made Tony nervous when they did that We are Military silent communication thing.  

“We’ve thought of that,” Maria agreed, head nodding. “The single signature either gives us an idea of who we’re dealing with, or it could be some kind of Skrull power play that we don’t have the variables to speculate on. However, we’ve got our best Skrull analysts on it, and initial opinions are positive. Vanguard agrees that the message seems genuine, and it doesn’t follow any known patterns of Skrull communication to date. The use of _I_ , first of all, instead of the ‘royal we’ that previous communications favored. It’s informal, speaks directly the Skrull still on Earth.”

“Is that a chance we’re really willing to take?” Rhodey asked pointedly.

Tony snorted and rolled his eyes. If he’d had anything handy, he would have thrown it at the back of Rhodey’s head. “Like we’re going to have a choice? Ten dollars and a hot dog says that this is on YouTube and every major news network by the time we leave here, if it’s not there already. The message was transmitted to too many unsecured offices.”

“I thought Vanguard was unhackable?” Steve asked, frowning unhappily. He hadn’t expressed any strong opinions one way or another about Vanguard and the other Skrull vessels, but Tony had always gotten the impression that he was uncomfortable with them. It may have just been because of Jarvis leaving to manage Vision, but it could also be because of the implication of them, the same nervous xenophobia that had gripped the rest of the planet. There were more than a few who pointed to a Skrull base orbiting the moon as just a different kind of infiltration. As much as he missed Jarvis, having him there had just made the issue moot for Tony. Jarvis may have transcended his original programing, but he was no traitor, and he would speak up if anything was going on that they needed to be concerned about. So far, Vanguard and the rest of the vessels had given him no reason for concern.

“Vanguard is unhackable,” Tony affirmed, “But the White House isn’t, and the chatty secretary in Putin’s office _definitely_ isn’t. Trust me, this is already out.” He tapped one finger on the open file with its seductive peace offering. He thought about hijacking the helicarrier’s telecommunications network and putting YouTube up on the main screen, but held himself in check. Maria gave him a look that was part warning and part acknowledgement of how very good he was being at Adulting at the moment.

“The future is uncertain,” Xavier said finally, “But until we have some proof to the contrary, I am inclined to believe that this is a hopeful note moving forward. How we respond to this message will either further the hostility and violence that has wracked the planet these last three years, or it will move us forward on the path to recovery. In all of history, there are no stories where isolationism has led to prosperity. On the contrary, every mention of it has led to catastrophe. If we do not willingly seek to know our galactic neighbors, eventually one of them will forcefully get to know us. It is clear that we cannot hide from rest of the galaxy any longer, and I – for one – would prefer that we enter it as equal partners in a peaceful relationship, and not as agitators who have picked a fight with a bigger opponent just because we can.”

Tony thought about it – about the Skrull space station, and Vanguard, and the amazing technology that even he was still behind on grasping. He thought about the Skrull Steve, his hand pressed to the glass under Tony’s, the sacrifice he’d made. It was enough. If there could be no more bloodshed, Steve would be happy with that.

“I’m willing to bet on hope,” Tony said, breaking the silence.  

**Author's Note:**

> Steve is not who he thinks he is; Skrulls!; imposter; there is NO non-con, but neither character realizes that Steve is not Steve, so this theoretically could be a consent issue; potential body horror; dysmorphia; very briefly implied torture (not to Steve or Tony); memory issues
> 
> There is NO: Graphic torture, graphic sex, rape.
> 
> Here's the tumblr post for this fic: http://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/post/145553155303/never-for-the-dragon-2016-cap-im
> 
> I'd love to hear your thoughts!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for 'Never for the Dragon'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7120576) by [a_sparrows_fall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sparrows_fall/pseuds/a_sparrows_fall)




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